
LETTERS OF 
HARRY JAMES SMITH 




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LETTERS OF 
HARRY JAMES SMITH 



LETTERS OF 
HARRY JAMES SMITH 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

JULIET WILBOR TOMPKINS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

The Riverside Press Cambridge 
I919 









^^^ 



V 



COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY EDITH SMITH 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Z.oo 



MAR 31 I9iij 

©CI.A5I5(»84 



He was an open window for us all! 

Through him we ga^ed upon a different world, 

And felt the quickening winds of Heaven. 

There birds sang, and sweet scents of spring 

Stole in. From that high casement wide 

We faced the sunrise, and upon the darkest night 

Saw stars. There Truth looked lovely 

And we saw the Soul of Man; 

Smiled at it, scorned its meanness, loved it still. 

And with its Maker saw that it was good. 

Without a sound the window is shut fast, 

The curtain drawn. How small and cramped our world! 

But where you went. Dear Lover of your kind, 

Did you not leave for us an open door? 

F. s. R. 



HARRY JAMES SMITH 

Harry James Smith was born in New Britain, Con- 
necticut, May 24, 1880, seventh of the nine children of 
John B. and Lucy F. Smith. 

After finishing his High School course in 1897, he 
taught for several months in the District School at Corn- 
wall Hollow, Connecticut. He entered Williams College, 
in the fall of 1898. There he was an honor student; and 
during his senior year was editor of the Williams " Liter- 
ary Monthly" and a member of Gargoyle. 

The next year (1902-03) he was Assistant in the Bio- 
logical Laboratory, preparing himself for the work by a 
summer's study at Woods Hole. 

The summer of 1903 was happily spent in a wheel 
trip through France with Karl Weston. 

The next year (1903-04) he studied English at Har- 
vard, receiving his Master's degree; and in 1904-05 
taught in the English Department at Oberlin College. 
In the autumn of 1905 he began his independent literary 
work, to which, except for a year on the editorial staff of 
the "Atlantic Monthly" (1906-07), he gave all his time 
until our entry into the war. 

Until 1909 he lived in New York and did various sort's 
of hack work in addition to a goodly number of short 
stories, poems, and his first novel, "Amedee's Son" 
(1908). But in 1909, after a severe attack of appendi- 
citis, with a protracted convalescence, he came to his 
home in Berlin, Connecticut, giving all his time to crea- 
tive work. 

His second novel, " Enchanted Ground," was published 
in 1 9 10, and it was in the autumn of the same year that 



viii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

"Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh" was given its trial production 
in Chicago. It was produced in New York in April, 191 1, 
and revived in 19 14. 

"Blackbirds" was produced in 19 13, running only 
two weeks in New York; and "Suki" and "Oh! Imogen" 
were tried out in 19 16. 

In 19 1 7 "A Tailor-Made Man" was produced, and 
in 19 18 "The Little Teacher" followed. Both these plays 
are still running at the time of writing (December, 19 18), 
the former with two companies. 

During these seven years he wrote many other plays : 
"The Countess and Patrick," rewritten into "Effie's 
Soul"; "Mathilda Comes Back" (in collaboration with 
Miss Eloise Steele); "Big Jerry"; "Game"; "Lady- 
bird," and "Northward Ho!" 

His Arichat summers began in boyhood on account of 
ill health, and in 19 12 he bought and remodelled his 
house, " Willowfield," on the hillside fronting the harbor. 

It was here in 19 17, after study with the Canadian 
pioneer and expert. Dr. John Bonsall Porter, that he 
began his own work with sphagnum moss. During the 
summer his collecting and preparing of the moss was 
done under the auspices of the National Surgical Dress- 
ings Committee of New York; but in December, 191 7, 
he received his brevet from the American Red Cross, 
and late in February he went to Seattle to investigate 
the supply of moss in the Northwest and to help in 
organizing the work. After two busy and successful 
weeks, he went to British Columbia to arrange for a 
shipment of moss for the Canadian Red Cross, and it 
was there, on March 16, 19 18, near Murray ville, that 
he was killed in a train and automobile collision. 



INTRODUCTION 

BY JULIET WILBOR TOMPKINS 

I HAVE been reading Harry James Smith's letters, writ- 
ten over a period of twenty years to family and friends, 
and now brought together by his death. They roughly 
outline his life, or such portion of it as he would consent 
to show: college days and a hint of spiritual struggle, 
an early impulse toward the ministry; then teaching, 
with the outward success that a vivid, eager intellect 
commands and the inner distress of the creative spirit 
forbidden to create; next, the firmer emergence of the 
artist, the demand to create even at the cost of a " starve- 
ling bank account " ; a brief essay at editing and respec- 
tability, but presently off again for Grub Street; stories 
and a couple of novels, and at last the breathless landing 
on his true plane, the comedy stage. A clear, "And so 
he lived happily ever after" ought to have followed the 
success of " Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh,'* as played by Mrs. 
Fiske; but he had to serve seven years for the second 
and third successes, "A Tailor-Made Man" and "The 
Little Teacher," crowded into the last year of his life. 
He had learned, however, what he was for; after that he 
had only to prove it. And last in the record comes war, 
and the further thing that he was emerges in the passion 
to serve. He met a tragic death in Red Cross work on 
the i6th of March, 1918. 

The letters have remade for me the perennial discov- 
ery that one does not know one's friends so very well. 
So it is only from one aspect that I can write about 



X INTRODUCTION 

Harry — an indoor aspect. We were always sitting down 
when we were together — at little tables, where Harry 
would let half of his dinner go uneaten because he was so 
much more interested in talking, and never could learn to 
combine the two; or before my fire — for it was usually 
winter when he came. His exultant love of action, of 
rough seas and November woods, and the rugged coast 
of his Arichat summers, were in the background of his 
talk, but he always brought a headful of human and 
ethical and literary ideas to try out, so that the out- 
doors side of him was only a flavor. And his declared 
hatred of conventionality amounted in my experience 
to little more than a refusal of parties. He would never 
come when any one else was coming, unless bullied into 
it, but, though he had acquired impressive secondary 
reasons for this, I think the primary reason was his 
fragile health, and an outfit of nerves that would have 
wrecked a person less simply wise. He had to eliminate, 
right and left, if he was to survive. He did it with a cheer- 
ful carelessness that took away any savor of invalidism 
— it was an uninteresting necessity, like washing the 
hands, that required no emphasis. 

The making of stories and plays was, of course, our 
prevailing theme. He was a wonderful critic, construc- 
tive and stimulating. If a plot straggled and blundered, 
he could bring it up into smart shapeliness with twenty 
minutes of concentrated listening. How he could listen ! 
I can see him — his hair boyishly rough on his forehead 
over clear blue eyes, his head dropped forward, sitting 
very quietly with tranquil hands, saying nothing at all 
until he had found what he wanted ; and then bringing out 
his suggestion with a delicacy gauged for any degree of 



INTRODUCTION xi 

author's sensitiveness. I had been brought up on a some- 
what robust order of criticism, and sometimes rewarded 
his literary confidences with hard knocks, but he took 
them with unfaiHng sweetness. When he had written 
something good, some bit of dialogue that was incan- 
descent with satiric humor, he loved it without shame, 
and came running with it as though it had miraculously 
befallen him, and so could be shown with no hampering 
thought of himself as the creator. He could be lyric in 
his appreciation of a scene just finished, describe it with 
adjectives that the vain would never dare utter aloud, 
no matter how glowingly they could whisper them in 
secret. And he could condemn, throw overboard, with 
the same liberality. His spirit was as sensitive as his 
body; but his work was quite deliberately lifted up out 
of the reach of all minor storms, and he cared about its 
integrity more than he cared about anything on earth 
— before the war came. He put it above, in front of, 
himself, as a parent might put a beloved child, want- 
ing the applause for it, not for him. I remember, after 
the premiere of "The Little Teacher," I reproached him 
for not having made the customary author's bow in re- 
sponse to the prolonged demand from the audience. His 
explanation was so like him : " Well, the average person 
who does n't know writers has a sort of glorified idea 
of them; there's a touch of fairy prince about it so long 
as he stays a mystery. Suppose I had come out there 
before the footlights, with no paint on, looking like an 
ass — don't you see how disillusioning it would have 
been?" Whether audiences really cherish these roman- 
tic ideas of their hidden purveyors of entertainment, I 
am not so sure; but Harry always imputed to people in 



xii INTRODUCTION 

general high ideals, lively fancy, and loving hearts, no 
matter how often he bumped against contradictory in- 
stances. 

No doubt it was this willingness to leave his personal 
self out of it that kept him unspoiled when at last, after 
dire years of mishap, he reached that playwrights' Ely- 
sium — two plays running on Broadway. The public 
recognized the substance under the laughter, the serious 
comment on life from which all sound comedy must 
spring, and gave him a lavish response. And he loved it, 
and worked harder than ever, and was very happy, but 
kept his humorous serenity intact. The success in the 
box office was necessary and very pleasant, but he was 
a little bored if any one dwelt on that aspect. Money 
instantly became what he did with it, with no inter- 
mediate period of gloating, and a good half of all he 
received, that last year, was spent on the war work that 
was more and more absorbing his time and thoughts. 

The winter of 19 17-18 was a deepening one for all 
Americans. I remember his coming in in the autumn 
full of an encounter with death, and demanding that 
we should live in closer and simpler relation to it. A 
country neighbor having died, friends had gone in and 
"helped,*' with all that that implies, opening to Harry 
exalted possibilities of human brotherhood. He declared 
hotly that our repugnance to the vital facts was an 
artificial and unworthy thing, bred of cities, where the 
painful rites are done for us, and that such stark experi- 
ences left one closer and kinder to all mankind. Well, it 
is what men and women who once sheltered their sen- 
sibilities have been daily discovering over in France. 
, How Harry would have loved to go! His bodily in- 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

firmities made it unthinkable, but if his spirit could have 
gone, it would have done great things. The buoyancy 
that could say, "Just to live, some days, is to be drunk!*' 
— the affectionate kindness that made "dear" a natu- 
ral word from him to any friend, the passionate recog- 
nition of the greatness of the cause, would have made of 
him a torch for dark ways. He had missionary blood in 
his veins, a strong idealistic impulse, but he belonged to 
his times, and a good scent for realities kept him firmly 
on earth. 

Our entrance into the war was a call instantly an- 
swered. He drilled with the home company in Connecti- 
cut, he tried to get into the wireless service, and finally, 
after study with Dr. John Bonsall Porter, of the Cana- 
dian Red Cross, undertook to introduce into the Ameri- 
can Red Cross the use of sphagnum moss for surgical 
dressings. This bog growth, lighter, cheaper, and more 
absorbent than cotton, has long been known to the Brit- 
ish medical service. Harry employed helpers, found and 
prepared the moss, arranged hospital demonstrations, 
raced to Washington at every chance of a hearing, and 
finally won out. 

Thirty-seven, with a good appetite for life, and suc- 
cess, at last, soundly his; years of happy work were 
opening before him. It is good to turn back to something 
he wrote a friend, years before, after a devastating ill- 
ness: "One thing I discovered from my hospital experi- 
ences, and that is, how easy it is to die. ... Of course 
I have never seemed to have any dread of death, such as 
oppresses many people: I always contemplate it with 
equanimity: but I have supposed somehow that the 
actual experience would be hard; that in last hours one 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

would have a panicky clinging to life. I feel as if I had 
been through it actually, and had found out that it is 
only a happy — or rather, dispassionate — relinquish- 
ment." I hope that in that brief, last minute, as he re- 
newed his discovery, he realized that he died in the 
service of his country. 



LETTERS OF 
HARRY JAMES SMITH 



LETTERS OF 
HARRY JAMES SMITH 

I 

To HIS Family 

Cornwall Hollow 
3 January, 1898 

Dear People: 

This long-dreaded first day of school teaching is 
finally over and you can bet your life I 'm glad. I would 
not live it over again for twice a week's salary. Not that 
disaster has arrived, but still there is reasons. 

This morning, after a breakfast of veal and pancakes, 
I got my load together (I could just get that blessed 
shawl-strap around it) and started off for the school. It 
is not very far; but it takes longer to get there when you 
have to plod through a foot or so of snow. I cannot say 
that one's first view of the schoolhouse prejudices him in 
its favor. The location, however, is charming. Just be- 
low there is a little pond and brook, at the left is a pic- 
turesque old sawmill, and at the right there is quite a 
stretch of field and hill. The building itself is in a grove. 
It was once painted whitish. The entrance is mostly 
worn out ; there are remains of several old locks, knobs, 
and bolts on the door, and there are remains of innumer- 
able kickings and knockings from the height of three 
feet down. . . . 

Cold is no word for the air in the schoolroom when I 



4 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

went in this morning. Booh ! I tried to feel gay, and after 
I had worked for fifteen minutes trying to start the fire 
and then had it go out, I looked back to that time with 
pleasure. I then made a trip to the sawmill after " kin- 
dlers,*' and ten minutes after made another, and finally 
about twenty minutes of nine a feeble flame rewarded 
my protracted efforts. The wood is green. Two children 
had already come. You can imagine how carefully I 
nourished that flame! It finally decided to burn and by 
nine o'clock the stove was warm. The schoolroom does 
not need to be described except by Whittier. Only I 
think it is rather worse than the "ragged-beggar," 
even. . . . 

In some way I lived through the day, though I was 
distracted to find something to busy the two little ones 
with. They spent a large share of the time doing nothing. 
Edith, what can I do for them? They cannot either write 
or read, and do not like to look at pictures. . . . 

II 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Ariclat, Cape Breton 

1 8 August, 1899 
My dear Miss Bascom: 

This is a disagreeable rainy day and for the first 
time in several weeks it is fun to be indoors. I have a 
great liking for rainy days myself — you have a chance 
to do so many things that seem somewhat out of place 
if it 's very fine weather, especially during vacation time. 
Now, to begin with, we all stayed in bed this morning 
until half-past nine, which is worse even than Sunday 
mornings at college. Our family is small just at present. 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 5 

as four of us, father and mother and Edith and Roy, 
have gone up to Sydney through the Bras d'Or Lakes 
for a two or three days' trip; that leaves only five of us 
to keep up the reputation of "Sleepy Hollow," as the 
girls insist on calling our house. 

They have been here about four weeks now and ex- 
pect to leave a week from next Tuesday. I am sure they 
have all had a splendid time, and most of us are brown 
as can be. Only my small sister is somewhat afflicted, for 
she has n't browned nicely, but merely freckled, and 
that so violently that perhaps her face, too, might have 
a sort of general tanned appearance before she goes 
home. 

Our principal excitements are rowing (pronounced ro- 
ing, though sometimes the other might suit) and playing 
golf. We have taken that up by ourselves and are all 
hugely interested. There is a great waste of land stretch- 
ing back from the town inland for several miles, and we 
managed to find a place smooth enough to set out some 
links on, so now there are two or more of us up there 
most of the time. I think it is a fine game, only awfully 
hard, and I am positively the worst player in existence, 
but I am beginning to improve a little now and hardly 
ever miss striking the ball more than five times out of six. 

It is very agreeable of you to take an interest in the 
geography and topography of this region — I generally 
find descriptions of that character decidedly dull, and 
so rarely undertake to write them, but since you ask me 
I shall be delighted to enlarge. Isle Madame is n't very 
big — just about seven by nine miles, I guess, with a 
very irregular coast-line; lots of little coves and harbors, 
you know, and long, rough capes, with now and then a 



6 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

good sand beach. Arichat itself runs along one of the 
loveliest little land-locked bays you can imagine. There 
are moderately high hills all around it which have n't 
any trees on them at all, but are covered with beautiful 
turf and large bare rocks. I never get tired of admiring 
these hills — the greens are so lovely, and then there is 
just the little strip of houses along the water. When we 
want to go bathing we walk to a beach about two miles 
away which is quite exposed to the ocean, at a village 
called Barrassois. As you might fancy, the water is not 
very tepid; but such hardy people as I am enjoy it 
hugely. There are ever so many beautiful drives around, 
along the shore through small French settlements of 
such interesting names as Petit de Grat, Cap au Guet, 
D'Escousse, Poulamond, etc., and one keeps finding 
such quaint, foreign-looking little bits of scenery — 
sometimes two or three isolated, weather-beaten fisher- 
huts with a few old peasant women to set it off, and then 
always the sea behind. A good many of the old women 
wear a queer headdress which they call (if my spelling 
is correct) " Mouchoir a la petune.'* I wonder where it 
came from, and of what descent these people are any- 
way; but none of them can tell you, except that some 
had ancestors "dans la patrie." Their French is really 
not at all bad, though it varies very much in different 
localities. Here in Arichat there is a large convent school, 
where they have imported nuns, and I presume that that 
has kept up the quality a great deal. You would have no 
trouble in understanding a girl who has been educated at 
the convent, I am sure, and when a person gets used to 
it he can generally follow what the real "paysans" talk 
about. 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 7 

I must tell you (before finishing my sixteen pages, 
which I have decided is a pretty good length for a letter) 
about a funeral I attended last week. There was a young 
French girl who lived two houses from us who was ill all 
the spring with some sort of consumption. She was n't 
any one whom I knew at all, but I have heard that she 
was a very nice girl, and a very pious girl, too. She died 
rather suddenly last week and we heard the next morn- 
ing that the funeral was coming in two days. That day 
we were all off sailing, but when I came back toward 
night I found a black-bordered note waiting for me in 
which I was "respectfully requested to attend the fu- 
neral of Josephine Hortense L'Andry as mourner." You 
can imagine my surprise as well as my reluctance to ac- 
cept, but since I was asked I thought I ought to. So I 
borrowed my brother's black trousers and some other 
suitable clothes and went over to the house at half-past 
seven the next morning. There were a large number of 
people about the door, but I walked in and took a little 
look into the room where the casket was. The room was 
almost dark, and the six tapers around the casket gave a 
strange appearance to the people in the room. There 
were four girls all in white (with veils) kneeling before 
the tapers; every one else was in black. The women were 
all praying and I felt strangely out of place, so I went on 
into a little back room where a large white band of mus- 
lin was tied around my left arm. There was quite a lit- 
tle delay before the procession was ready to start, but 
finally the Enfants de Marie — the women's society — 
came out, all with white ribbons diagonally over their 
shoulders, and took their place ahead of the wagon. 
Then the pall-bearers put in the casket and laid on the 



8 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

pall — a real pall, mind you, of silver and black velvet 
— and the procession began to move. The four girls in 
white walked beside, and just behind was one decrepit 
old sea captain — the only chief mourner. Then came 
the other mourners, and behind walked the crowd which 
increased at every house. You can't imagine how strange 
and primitive it seemed, especially when the people we 
met on the street kneeled until we passed; and then the 
high requiem mass at the "chapel," and the services at 
the grave — it's too long to describe, and pretty hard, 
too, to make it sound picturesque, but I trust you have 
the idea. . . . 

Ill 

To HIS Sister 

Williamstown, Mass. 

13 November, 1899 
. . . This is a dark, gray afternoon. The moun- 
tains have lost almost all their foliage within the last few 
days and the whole landscape is very much changed 
thereby. I have a peculiar fondness for November and 
November scenery, though. There is a definite tone 
value to it, a sort of genre painting aspect, which it lacks 
at other times of the year, except perhaps in late winter. 
Things seem to go so well together and the whole has 
an individual character which one misses in summer, I 
think. Then, it is more heterogeneous — bunches of 
woods, and orchards, and all kinds of fields, and a dif- 
ferent color to every tree. You get tired because it has 
so much variety; it's like the Boston Library with 
twenty different styles of decoration in as many rooms. 
Now everything is reduced to a few elemental features. 



TO HIS SISTER 9 

I think this is the reason why I love the scenery of Isle 
Madame so much and why I cannot imagine getting 
tired of it. . . . 

IV 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

IVilliamstown, Mass. 

30 January, 1900 
... In Boston, I went to see Modjeska in " Marie 
Antoinette." It was a question with me whether to see 
her or Mrs. Fiske, but as I had not read "Vanity Fair," 
I decided that Becky could " aller au diable," and chose 
Marie. And I for one shall never regret it. The acting 
was uniformly good, the accessories, especially one or 
two sceneries, were excellent, and Modjeska — well, I 
thought she was a queen. Even if she is a little old, she's 
certainly lost none of her artistic ability, and what a 
beautiful voice and such "air regale!" . . . 

V 
To HIS Sister 

IVilliamstown, Mass. 

April, 1900 
... I have been reading these last few days on 
outside history topics. Out of the list of fifteen or more I 
chose Henry IV of France (Henry of Navarre), and I am 
head over heels with interest in the subject. He was a 
most wonderful man — an ideal of generosity and kind- 
liness, a thorough statesman and an absolutely fearless 
warrior, honorable in his religion and yet twice a Cath- 
olic and twice Huguenot; most foolishly extravagant, 
dissolute, and fickle and selfish in his many love affairs 



10 ' LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

— certainly a unique combination of opposite qualities. 
With all the rest there's a naivete and ingenuousness, a 
boyish simplicity about his character, that makes you 
love him in spite of yourself. 

But this is not doing Psychology and I really must 
stop. . . . 

VI 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

17 July, 1900 
. . . The trip up to Halifax was fine and calm and 
1 was n't sick a bit. Of course, I was glad of that, in spite 
of the large added expense. Mon Dieu ! how things cost 
on a steamer, and I had to take every meal but one — 
"two boiled eggs — 20 cts.," and here in Arichat we are 
buying them for eleven cents a dozen. 

From Halifax up to Hawkesbury I came by train in 
order to save another day of travelling by water. We 
started off with eleven cars and two engines and I guess 
every car was full. At any rate, I sat on the platform a 
good share of the morning very comfortably stationed 
on the wheel of the brake. I never saw anything like the 
way these Provincial trains go — crawling up a long 
grade as slow, almost, as a horse and cart, and then rush- 
ing down lickety-split, so that one has to hold on for 
dear life. It was good fun, though, and the scenery was 
beautiful — a fine, rural country with fields simply red 
with clover and large stretches of evergreen woods. And 
the names — how do you like these — Antigonish, Mer- 
igomish, Shubenacadie, and Cow Cove? . . . 



TO OLIVER M. WIARD ii 

VII 
To Oliver M. Wiard 

Williamstown, Mass. 

4 November, 1900 
. . . Two weeks ago I was very busy over " Lit." 
work — another Acadian story. I had dreadful travail 
in giving birth to it and wrote and rewrote the descrip- 
tions, etc., until I loathed life, but once done I felt not a 
little satisfied with it. There is some typical Isle Madame 
in it — the road to Gros Nez which you never saw, but 
which resembles the road to Manche a Cochon, which 
you did see. Do you recall that ride of ours — the old 
man mending a net, the inevitable dog that barked, and 
the roadway finally merging into the long stony beach? 

I fear I have n't given much of the true tone of the 
scenery in my descriptions, but I attempted a little 
genre painting and I shall be sorry if it's no good at all. 

The plot is almost nil. A young fellow, an American, 
— let us say you, — appears at Gros Nez. You enter 
into converse with an old weather-beaten fisherman who 
talks with fond pride of his little boy (how I wish one 
could represent that pronunciation of old Maxime's, " dhe 
leetle bah-ee," without appearing too much to seek local 
color and pathetic mood), which latter is working in Bos- 
ton, rich, rich, and well-dressed, and with an easy job at 
a hotel, etc. He takes you into the little house where old 
Lizette with ready volubility enlarges on the wealth and 
grandeur of Amedee's position. So often she thinks of 
him, poor little woman, on the dreary winter nights and 
says many prayers for the little boy so far, so far — 

After which goo-goo you ofi'er to call on Amedee in 
Boston, and bid adieu to Gros Nez. 



12 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

Amedee, when unearthed, turns out a smug, ten-cent- 
diamond town-man, who speaks of his forbears as 
quaint old duffers, and wonders at the possibility of 
anybody's living at such a place as Gros Nez. " But of 
course they're used to it and I suppose they enjoy it 
in their way. They've never seen anything of life, you 
know"; and with a compassionate shrug still moving his 
metropolitan shoulders we shuffle Mr. Amedee Brown 
(no longer Le Brun) ofiF the stage. 

As for Arichat, the little place seems scarcely changed 
from when you and I were there together four years ago. 
Some diflPerences there are — the town does not appear 
so decrepit as it was then, there are certainly fewer un- 
occupied houses, and in general the houses are thriftily 
kept and more than ever adorned with Washington ge- 
raniums. The willows in front of the Eyrie (as we called 
the house this year) have grown fast and now almost 
totally obscure it from the street. 

Madame Galland has a piano which Evangeline, now 
a great, strapping girl, freckled, and coquettish beyond 
all hope, vigorously pounds by the hour, particularly 
whenever she fancies you may be listening. She can play 
the "Water-Lily Polka," and "Casket of Roses Waltz" 
without losing count more than once to a line. 

As for Madame, she is undeniably older, but from no 
fault of hers, and when you see her of a Sunday, well 
tricked out with false hair and artificial blush, she is the 
same audaciously pert and vivacious little woman. The 
" old woman " is tumble-down and pretty nearly wrecked. 
Her teeth are all gone and her face is scarce seen for the 
obscuring wrinkles. She still limps about dejectedly, and 
often when passing the house I have caught her haggard. 



TO HIS SISTER 13 

lifeless face peering at me cannily. . . . Old Captain 
Babin prates as ever of Lafayette and the French, while 
Madame Babin welcomes you in with the inevitable 
"you must excuse." . . . 

VIII 
To HIS Sister 

fVilliamstown, Mass, 

21 March, 1901 
... I have been reading Robert Burns this week 
and with big fun. He keeps disappointing you — so su- 
perficial and selfish; but there's a musical and pathetic 
value in his poems that makes you feel them truly. I 
wonder how much of this is due to the Scotch and how 
much is real inside worth that would bear an English 
dress. . . . 

The fellows are wanting me to take the leadership of 
the Senior Bible Class for next year and I am trying to 
decide just now what is right in the matter. I wish that I 
could talk it over with you, but as the election comes 
next Sunday I don't see how I can arrange it. I guess, 
though, that I shall make up my mind to do it. Rowland, 
who has just been elected President of the Y.M.C.A., 
had the same questions about accepting that place that 
I have in regard to this; but I don't believe one makes a 
mistake in taking a leading place in religious affairs if he 
acknowledges frankly to those who choose him that he 's 
not very much settled in his own beliefs and could n't 
define where he does stand. I think, though, that I am 
gradually going over to what you might call extreme 
liberalism. Certainly I look at almost every subject dif- 
ferently from what I did Freshman year. 



14 LETTERS OF HARRY JA?AES SMITH 

. . . The meeting for the election of the new " Lit." 
board comes Saturday and the meeting for the next 
matter in mind comes, I suppose, Wednesday, so by the 
time I next write you I shall either be chairman and a 
candidate for the Gargoyle or I shall be still plain H. J. S. 
'02, with plenty of pride left to keep up appearances and 
to make people think that he does n't much care after 
all. . . . 

fX 

To Rowland Haynes 

" Bonniebrae," Berlin 

30 December, 1901 
... I believe I said to you that I did n't expect 
to get very much out of my visit in New York. Well, I 
was a darn Willy to say so and never was more mis- 
taken in my forecasting. I shall always remember the 
three days at the Settlement as a most valuable and 
helpful period. The best of it was that I was n't preached 
to at all, but seemed to be expected to take a hand in 
the work as I had leisure to do so; and when I had a 
long, thoughtful talk with Mr. White, the head-worker, 
— who, by the way, is a corker, — he seemed to know 
just my difficulties and how to help me. So I had an 
afternoon in the Penny Provident Bank sticking on 
stamps and taking in pennies and dimes from small 
dirty fists — " Please sir, me sister sent tin cints for 
hern, and me brudder ain't goin' to put in none this 
week, an' I 've got seven," etc. — and that evening I 
helped (in an insignificant way) at a Neighborhood Ball 
in the Assembly Room. A couple of mornings I went 
round calling with my sister on some very poor and 



TO ROWLAND HAYNES 15 

dirty families where I gained a somewhat new idea of 
what real charity and brotherliness are. 

. . . You will be glad to hear that I have got the "Lit/' off 
to press minus a story which I shall send in to-morrow. 
I never realized what a moral strain it would be to do 
any work of that kind at home. I went at it desperately, 
savagely, profanely, Christmas afternoon and got it 
done — all except my own part thereof. Yesterday I 
closeted myself in the third story with a pad, pen, and 
some frog-in-my-throats, and swore I should produce 
something before another sun set. Then I began looking 
out of the window and thinking how lovely Mother 
Earth appeared in her blanket of fog. Then I wondered 
what the little seeds were doing under the ground, 
and then lastly I began to think of you — which, of 
course, was "nice,'' but not at the time helpful. Well, 
anyway, eventually I really did get down to work, and 
now several yellow sheets of closely written "drule" are 
waiting to be shipped off. I really feel sort of ashamed to 
use what I have done, for it is not very good, but, really, 
I could n't let our January issue have only two stories 
and one of them worse than mediocre. 

I concluded last evening that there was no use in my 
delaying my decision as to the future any longer, for I 
saw no reason to doubt my own sincerity and, I believe, 
my real desire to put myself where I can serve Jesus 
Christ best in the world. And so I very prosaically con- 
cluded to train myself with a view to entering the min- 
istry, feeling that in this field there is the greatest need 
of workers and that wherever it may seem best for me 
eventually to work I shall somewhere find opportunities 
for fullest self-expression and largest usefulness. I truly 



i6 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

believe that I have decided this matter right. You know 
that I have tried to hard enough, and if wrongly, why, 
some day perhaps I '11 find it out. . . . 

X 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

Williamstown, Mass. 

30 January, 1902 
. . . The winter up here has been glorious of late. 
I often go out to walk alone on the hills and I hardly 
know anything I enjoy more, unless it be walking with 
some one else, like you, to whom I can speak at once and 
without preamble the things that are closest to me or to 
whom there is no need to speak at all if the silence seems 
pleasanter. But I am often surprised and a little ashamed 
of myself that, when out alone during the glorious dim- 
ming of a winter day, I persist in thinking about such 
trivial things. I do not want to, nor is the impression of 
the experience afterward a thing of trivialities, but mo- 
mentarily there seems to be nothing worth while in my 
mind at all. I very rarely think beautiful things except 
when definitely trying to express them in- one way or 
another and I mourn to admit it. I am curious to know 
whether it is so with you or not. 

... I have been most hugely interested in reading 
Stevenson of late. Just now I am engaged upon his let- 
ters and have lost my heart completely. Have you read 
them? They have the most refreshingly personal flavor, 
are often shockingly informal and outspoken, and they 
give you a comprehension of the man that I am sure 
nothing else, saving personal intimacy, could possibly 
do. ... His literary style m'a tout a fait ravi le coeur, I 



TO ROWLAND HAYNES 17 

know not where in English one may find greater charm 
and gracefulness of form, sometimes possibly a least bit 
recherche, but not often. ... 

... I have just been reading a book or two of the 
" Faery Queen" over again. What a poem that is! Where 
else shall you find such pure music — liquid, fluent, gor- 
geous! I am now going to begin on " Paradise Lost ''and 
see how five or six years have changed my attitude to- 
ward that. . . . 

XI 

To Rowland Haynes 

Williamstown, Mass. 

14 October, 1902 
... I find the work here in the Biological Lab- 
oratory much pleasanter than I feared. I am going to 
enjoy the most of it I know, and I feel very glad to be 
able to say that with so much of certainty. I need not 
detail my affection for Dr. Kellogg. Ca va sans dire, 
because Tve often said it before. He is treating me 
white. Most of my work so far has been collecting frogs, 
hydras, etc., and reading up on protozoa, etc. This is not 
exceptionally easy, but on the whole not uncongenial, 
and I have found time to "read around" more or less 
and definitize my notions in regard to the work I want 
to do for my Master's degree. I have already registered: 
yet the details of my major work are not all settled. It 
will include the modern theories of heredity (Darwin, 
Galton, Brooks, Weissmann), work in Huxley, Andrews, 
and A. R. Wallace, and possibly some more Darwin. 
That is a good set of men to know. 

For my minor I have *'The Psychological Basis of 



i8 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

Religion." There are three books to read, I believe, 
Everett, William James, and some one else — not Star- 
buck. I doubt whether this will do me any good, but it 
may prove interesting. What I mean by "doing me 
good" is, of course, helping me to settle any religious 
doubts. I am getting pessimistic in that regard and am 
beginning to think that probably 1 had better not plan 
to enter religious work as a life business. The book that 
has just brought home to me the logical results of my 
attitude toward the Gospel question — I mean the at- 
titude of frank criticism and the rejection of what ap- 
pears unreasonable or inconsistent — is Huxley's '* Sci- 
ence and Christian Tradition." Have you read it? ... _ 

XH 
To Oliver M. Wiard 

Williamstown, Mass. 

24 November, 1 902 
. . . My minor subject is "The Psychological 
Basis of Religion," and it is on that that I am now expend- 
ing the whole of my spare time. The best of it is that I 
do believe that I am beginning to get some definite and 
sensible help from this study. It opens up a field of 
thought which is, in the main, quite new to me, and 
which seems to reach out to a vague and but half-grasp- 
able beyond, in which Mystery and Ultimate Truth 
seem to unite into one, and that one an inclusive and an 
interpretative basis of the highest understanding of the 
All. This is a dark saying and you will soon be accusing 
me of arrant mysticism if I indulge in many more after 
its kind. I cannot now more clearly defmitize my view, 
it only means a new conviction in me of a meaning in 



TO HIS FAMILY 19 

things and a divine in things and in us, a "divine" not 
passive and only subjectively construed ; but active and 
offering us an attainable converse or communion with 
it. This may not be a permanent conviction with me. I 
do not yet feel sure of myself to such an extent that I can 
assert any "thus and thus" of my future states, but if 
it does stay, and bear critical investigation as well as the 
inevitable dark hours, it will mean more than I can ex- 
press in written characters. . . . 

XIII 
Toms Father 

IVilliamstown, Mass, 

17 May, 1903 
. . , But now that I no longer contemplate the 
ministry, the estimation which I give to credendo is once 
more with me where I think it ought to be; in other 
words, not a matter which I consider vital. I am willing 
that any man should believe what he wants to so long 
as his heart is right; so long as brotherly love, and serv- 
ice and charity, duty and kindness are to him the best 
things in the world : so long as he is willing to follow the 
clear shining of the ideal — his ideal — wherever it may 
lead him. . . . 

XIV 

To HIS Family 

S.S. Rotterdam, 25 June, 1903 
Dear People: 

Eight days at sea and fifty hours still ahead ! My- 
self, fat, glistening, and happy, and quite dedicated 
(privately) to the life of a sea-rover or a pirate. Really 



20 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

this is too good to be true. I always knew it would be 
glorious if you could only be sure of sea-legs and a good 
nautical appetite; and that's exactly what Tve had 
every minute of this trip. Never a touch of sea-sickness 
from the start until now, and as for eating — my palm- 
iest days in Arichat would not bear comparison with my 
record on the Rotterdam. The weather has been pretty 
good all the way — I should have said "very good" if 
the report posted in the corridor did not have three days 
labelled "rough" and another "high-swell," and if our 
passage had not been slower than usual owing to strong 
head winds. Every day goes by almost the same as every 
other, consequently I presume that a day's programme 
will be able to give you an idea of my present existence 
as well as anything else. After which I will add modify- 
ing phrases and comments. 

Our stateroom is delightfully well ventilated. 1 have 
one of the top berths, and the wind stirs in my hair all 
night long. The consequence is that despite there being 
four souls (with bodies attached) in the space whose di- 
mensions in the rough I have already given you, I sleep 
like a nut all night long, dreaming of home (of course) 
and the dear faces gathered about the Sunday dinner. 

. . . There is the queerest of queer composites in this 
second cabin. The bulk of the crowd is German — regu- 
lar Rhineland Sauerkrauters, who talk in high, un- 
musical voices with sharp intonations and make an 
indescribable hubbub during meal-time. A number of 
little fry add to the din with squalls and shouts. 

Another element in the cabin is fifteen or twenty stu- 
dents, mostly Americans. We like some of them very 
much. Hollanders and Austrians there are, and others 



TO HIS FAMILY 21 

whom it is impossible to classify. On the whole, it is a 
very good-natured and jolly crowd, and in my judgment 
far more interesting sociologically than anything the 
first cabin has to offer. . . . 

And now 1 must tell you of two acquaintances we have 
made. A Mademoiselle Meyer, and a Mademoiselle de la 
Tour, both Swiss girls who teach French in Pittsburgh 
— refined and witty and good to look at, and thor- 
oughly French, with the most charming accent; it is a 
treat to know them and talk with them. Also it is very 
fortunate for our own welfare (my own especially), as 
it means the opportunity of brushing up conversational 
French. These last days we have spent a good deal of 
our time with them and the time has gone very pleas- 
antly indeed. We sit clear up on the top deck (the boat 
deck) where the second-classers are also allowed a little 
space, and there in the wind and the sun, with the slow, 
easy roll of the ship under you, one can be as happy as 
mortal man can wish to be. I want nothing better and, 
if it were not that I am in a tremendous hurry, now that 
the end is near, to get really ashore and to be doing 
something, I could wish it should continue indefinitely. 
My steamer rug is the greatest thing for comfort that 
ever was, and wrapped up in it and a raincoat and a 
sweater, one can be happy for a short piece of eternity. 

I have read one two-volume novel, Dumas's "Queen 
Margot,'* which is the best thing for lazy days I ever 
got hold of, and Stevenson's "Master of Ballantrae," 
which ends up with fine gore and carnage, and Sir 
Thomas Browne's " Religio Medici." . . . 

I want to thank Alice and Faith for their good letters 
which I received about ten minutes after mailing the 



22 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

note from the wharf. The gum is all chewed, and Faith's 
loving hopes and picturesque imaginations in regard to 
my seamanship all miscarried. 

Pity now poor sister Faith, 
Faded to a tenuous wraith, 
All the hopes she hoped for Harry 
Fated sadly to miscarry; 
For upon the deck sits he 
Stomach-full and bright of blee. 

It was more fun than I ever imagined it would be to 
find a nice bunch of steamer letters at the boat. Bess 
and Wilhemena both wrote me, and several others be- 
sides, not to speak of those from my own hearthstone 
which I have already mentioned. . . . 

XV 

To HIS Sister 

Huelgoat, France 

1 1 July, 1903 
. . . We have been most fortunate in finding nice, 
clean places to stay, good beds, delicious things to eat, 
and economical charges. This French cooking — ah! it 
is easier to live the life of the spirit after one of these 
fat dinners. 

Next to food in position, but only in that, in every- 
thing the most magnificent sights 1 have ever seen, are 
these great, soaring, poetic cathedrals, full of mystery 
and grace and fervor and ambition, full of the grotesque 
and fantastic, full of shadows and glittering, colored 
glass like a great setting of jewels — oh! how they take 
you right close to the hearts of those old, unwritten 



TO HIS SISTER 23 

centuries, when men built their flesh and spirit into 
vocal stone! And each one — save some of the tawdry 
things at Rouen — has its own glorious individuality: 
some are benign and gracious; others are austere and 
warlike; others, like that stupendous and uncompleted 
pile at Beauvais, speak of towering ambition, as futile as 
that of the builders of Babel. Just imagine that sheer 
spring of the columns, over a hundred and sixty feet, 
straight from the floor, with windows fifty-five feet high 
under the vaulting, every line, every mass, aspiring up- 
ward right toward the sky — the effect is overpowering. 
One readily forgives them for having tried to do beyond 
their power; their failure is n't a failure after all, but a 
successful embodiment of those overreaching ideals of 
the children of men, which ordinarily are still-born, or 
never born at all. Yet from a worldly-wise point of view 
it's as big a failure as you can imagine, needing atten- 
tion and expenditure, the stone lacework crumbling and 
breaking, the little pinnacles set at dizzy heights on the 
flying buttresses and towers, literally washing away; 
from the outside and close to, the whole mass gives you 
a feeling half of terror, it 's so dizzily high and so boldly 
poised on its massive piers. I wonder that Beauvais is 
not better known: in its way I never want to see any- 
thing better. 

This is enough of rhapsody for once. It makes me feel 
indescribably small and childish to babble on without 
any tempering of language; but when you really feel 
things, you know, why, you have to say what you think 
if you say anything at all! I hate these people so filled 
with scientific precision and self-conscious criticism that 
they can't enjoy a thing with a real enthusiasm. I tell 



24 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

H that he's running great danger of killing his own 

imagination through his passion for accurate thought 
and his introspective self-repression. Emotion may be 
only feeling, and may not be the straightest guide for 
conduct; but in it, at any rate, lie the springs of conduct 
and the sense of values in life, and I am of the opinion 
that reason can hardly claim a genuine priority, much as 
we insist upon making for it a factitious one and in imag- 
ining that we act by it. . . . 

XVI 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

Tours, Indre et Loire, France, 

23 July, 1903 
. . . K. W. makes the best sort of a chap to knock 
about the world with, almost always in the finest good- 
humor and as generous and thoughtful as any one can be. 
And then we both of us like the same sort of things, and 
it is n't necessary to be making sacrifices for each other 
all the time, which may be very lovely, but is n't much 
fun in vacation. I am not sure whether you would keep 
me longer for a friend if you could see some of the little 
holes we have put up at on the way, or some of the weird 
people we have made the acquaintance of. But really, 
it 's delicious — all the hotels that are mentioned in our 
Baedeker's we cross off at once as being ineligible on 
account of expense; besides, we are sure to find English 
people at them almost everywhere, and that's a species 
of animal we wish most extremely to avoid. Then we 
rummage about the city until we find some nice-sound- 
ing name hung out over an unpretentious or dilapidated 



TO R0WLAND;HAYNES 25 

front, such as, "The Golden Hen," or, "At the Gilt 
Angel," or "The Three Grocers," and then Karl goes in 
and in his prettiest French makes inquiries about prices 

— from without, where I guard the wheels, I hear him 
trying the same jocosities and imagine the same smiles 

— and then we put our machines in the parlor or the 
hen-roost or — possibly, if there is one — the barn, and 
we toil up to our room and scrub our faces and feel like a 
pair of gilt-edged Jacks. As a rule we have found the 
very best sort of things to eat and I need not tell you 
that we have made the most of our opportunities. And 
in spite of our forty or fifty miles a day, I am growing 
stoutish, not to mention fat. How do I know it? Because 
I can't fasten my belt where I used to. Sure proof. . . . 

We spent that night at the little town of Barbizon; a 
great resort for landscape artists. The hotel was full, but 
the landlady gave us a room in the house of an old peas- 
ant dame. We got to talking with her and found that she 
had been intimately connected with the Millet family, 
that is to say, she had nursed his nine children. She told 
us all sorts of interesting anecdotes about the artist and 
his poverty, and we were more than reconciled to the 
odors of stale boiled cabbage that colored the house. Be- 
sides, my bed was very clean and comfortable and I 
slept well. 

XVII 

To Rowland Haynes 

Amiens, France 

3 September, 1903 

. . . Really this summer over here has been the 

experience of my life. I do not say that I have "grown" 



26 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

or "broadened" perceptibly — but there's always a 
zest in enjoying the fruit of one's labors, and that hon- 
est taste I 've had in my mouth with every mouthful of 
France. But that's not all: these tremendous old ca- 
thedrals are the greatest things I ever dreamed of and to 
have been for a brief time in their presence is worth a 
very great deal. 

. . . And then just the fun of it. Bowling along lovely, 
well-kept roads for weeks with always something new 
and interesting just ahead and always something pleas- 
ant to remember just behind, — yes, that 's a good sort 
of vacation and I shall hereafter recommend it to thin 
and overworked intellects. Some day I hope I may see 
you again and then I shall have many things to tell you 
and also an inconceivable number of postal cards to 
exhibit. . . . 

XVIII 

To THE Same 

Cambridge, Mass. 
29 November, 1903 
... The two weeks I was at Marblehead Neck 
with Alice were the happiest of my year — long, sunny, 
autumn days spent on the rocks beside the break of the 
waves. We read and talked and sung and indulged in 
occasional quarrels for variety, and the freedom from 
responsibility or from definite occupation was most re- 
freshing. And best of all was the fact that little Harry 
was well not only in soul, but in body. Think what it 
means to me, after sixteen years ! I rejoice and be glad 
over it all the days of my life. Was it Europe? or was it 
pills? or was it mere preordination? Ca ne me regarde 



TO THE SAME 27 

pas — I am well. " One thing I know, that whereas 
once . . ." 

I came up here the first of October, and have not 
been beyond Boston, except twice to Beverly and over 
to the Dartmouth- WiUiams game. But my Hfe has not 
lacked variety. I have spent a good deal of time in Bos- 
ton at the theatres, at lectures, and museums, and upon 
the crowded streets rubbing shoulders with the sons of 
men. My work here is not easy, but, for the most part, 
thoroughly enjoyable. 

... As regards the drama I am becoming exceedingly 
enthusiastic. The instructor is not only a student, but 
also a practical actor, thoroughly acquainted with stage 
technique and with all the tricks of dramatic presenta- 
tion; he makes you enthusiastic; you feel as if you should 
like to devote your life to so noble an art, to face the 
obloquy and persecution of the proper world and to see 
what you could do in the development of a worthy na- 
tional drama. Don't you think that is my mission? I am 
going to all the good plays I can afford ("rush seats" 
do for me) and am observing the field intently. I am 
anxious to see considerable melodrama, for I believe that 
that is to be the source of any dramatic renaissance that 
may come: but as I can get no one to go with me I have 
as yet confined my study in that direction to "Sky 
Farm" and "Old Kentucky." 

. . . We are very well situated here. Eliot and I have 
two upper chambers, comfortable enough for a working 
life, though hardly comparable to my Jerusalem Cham- 
bers of last year. Stuart and Homer are right near by, 
and as our work is exactly the same, we are together a 
great deal, studying and criticizing each others' themes 



28 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

and discussing ultimate significances with such zeal as 
would delight dear G 's soul. 

XIX 

To THE Same 

63 Gorham Street, Cambridge 

16 April, 1904 
... I do not know, I am sure, how you would 
like Harvard. I know nothing about the spirit in the 
graduate school, as I admit to having lived with no 
catholicity of interests this year, and am hardly ac- 
quainted with a dozen men in Cambridge outside of my 
eating-table crowd. There are things which I dislike 
very much, indeed, as, for example, the "beer nights" 
of all college organizations. 

But the English department is, from my point of view, 
everything that one could ask, and I do not see, for my- 
self, how I could have been more suitably and happily 
situated than I have been here. I fmd more satisfaction 
in my work than I ever expected I should be able to fmd, 
and I believe that I shall always remember this year as 
the happiest so far in my life. This has been bought with 
a price; but I can look myself squarely in the face and 
reiterate that I do not think I have shunned the other 
part for the worse. Do you understand what I mean 
when I say deliberately that I do not think the knowl- 
edge of truth is the greatest thing in the world? What 
1 mean by that sentence fairly well differentiates my 
present spiritual state from that of my senior year in 
Williams, and we may put the chiefest shifting point in 
the centring of my ideal interests, at Christmas to 
Easter of 1903. The goggles through which I now see 
life are really different, . . . 



TO HIS SISTER 29 

XX 

To HIS Sister 

Oberlin, Ohio 

31 October, 1904 
. . . Yesterday every minute evaporated into 
vanity, and to-day — theme-correctors have to be in- 
terviewed, castigated, investigated, inspired, one after 
another through the morning. All the rest of the time, 
save an hour of golf, has gone to getting ready a lecture 
to my freshmen. I have two more to get together, but 
they will not be so hard as some, since the class is just 
beginning on the early drama in England and I can talk 
a good deal out of my head. Last week, two lectures on 
Spenser nearly put an end to me. I thank "whatever 
gods may be" that Spenser lasts not ever, that I need 
raise him never — but Una, Archimago, Duessa, Sans- 
joy, Sansloy, and the Dragon may all go to bed and to 
sleep. My crowning work in Spenser was a comparison 
of him and Bunyan; and I think I hit fairly square on 
this, too; — why Spenser is poet, and poet first and last, 
the begetter of an ideal world peopled with substance- 
less, dreamlike personages, moved never with a wave of 
passion or real dramatic emotion. 

. . . This Freshman work, although it does bring vis- 
ible returns, simply destarches one, leaves one limp and 
flaccid. Everything depends on the instructor; he has to 
shoulder the weight of an uninterested class and carry 
them away bodily; if you get their attention it is by 
sleight of hand, chameleon changes of plan, attitude, 
humor. I cuddle now, now I exhort, now rage leoninely 
— and the circus-game keeps them tolerantly enter- 
tained. 



30 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

XXI 

To THE Same 

Oberlin, Ohio 

29 January, 1905 
. . . Thank you for your very sweet note which 
said just what I hoped you would feel able to say about 
my somewhat fantastic plans. I feel sure that I am fol- 
lowing after my star: if it proves a will-o'-the-wisp,worse 
luck to me; but 1 shall have done my best without fear 
or reproach and I don't think that is ever mean or 
wrong conduct. And after all, what difference does it 
make whether most people understand and approve: 
it 's my life, and I had better invest it where the promises 
of ultimate joy seem the greatest. 

The Freshmen like me — which is a comfort, but I 
find — miserable one that I am — that it is n't enough 
to make me contented. I feel that I am really almost 
throwing away the year — just work, work, work, and 
never a chance to think or to cultivate my soul or to 
write a line of verse or prose. At the end of the year I 
shall be just where I was at the beginning, only older 
and skinnier and more disagreeable and less enthusiastic. 
And what shall I do then ? I think that when my fates 
gave me the opening last summer I was a fool not to 
take it. In other words, it is by pretending not to care 
and by attempting to think about something else that 
I manage to grin and be jolly. My vitals are all wrong. 
You probably knew this already. Anyway, it is rather 
superfluous for me to say it. Only now and then it 's a 
satisfaction to stop bluffing. 

I am just lecturing now on the English Drama — my 
own sweet specialty — and 1 think sometimes the class 



TO OLIVER M. WIARD 31 

sweep along with me, genuinely delighted. I keep them 
down to earth, however, with weekly twenty-minute 
tests, which make them gnash their teeth. And we are 
now reading "Othello," and next week I give them a 
lecture of my own on Middleton's plays, about which I 
think I can talk pretty well. 

XXII 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

Oherlin, Ohio 

6 February, 1905 
Dear Oliver: 

I can't tell you how very welcome your letter was 
to me, coming as it did in the midst of renewed trouble 
with my eyes, and bringing a kind of spiritual enthu- 
siasm that I was momentarily in great need of. Your 
work as you describe it sounds interesting: it must be 
splendid practice, if nothing else, to be at work on body- 
ing forth ideas in concrete expressions. I suppose that 
until fortune gives us the chance to work out our ideals 
along our own lines, we must follow somebody else's 
line, and, making a species of compromise, attempt to 
content ourselves therewith. It is not a nice-sounding 
doctrine; but I believe that in the corrupted currents of 
this world, it is inevitable, if we would live; and what is 
inevitable is right. Next year I shall probably learn this 
bitterly: for I am going in search of the Golden Fleece 
to the end of the world. I think it is the only wise thing 
for me to do; until I have tested my literary ability I 
can't estimate it; and in this eternal teaching work, in 
itself interesting and helpful, there is no chance at all, 
nor do I see any prospect of there being one, to think 



32 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

and work and branch out into extraneous production. 
Accordingly I have concluded to throw over my pros- 
pects of pedagogical advancement and to hunt for em- 
ployment in New York. Even if it's sweeping out res- 
taurants I shall still have some hours for writing and 
thinking. I venture to believe that I am more or less 
foolish; but that is part of the attraction, the fatal 
attraction, of the scheme. . . . Either because I have 
dabbled in the fatal pool, or because I do genuinely 
hear the call to the work — it is hard to say which — I 
cannot down in myself an insistent and commanding 
desire or passion to create something beautiful. I could 
die at the foot of a masterpiece and be happy in dying, 
if that masterpiece were my own — my own final con- 
tribution and message to the world. It attracts me far 
more than any dreams of heaven-bliss ever did; the im- 
pulse is so strong in me to set to work that I can hardly 
wait for the laggard months to crawl by. . . . 

XXIII 

To THE Same 

Oberlin, Ohio 

6 March, 1905 

... I must say, rather shamefacedly, that I 

never could make myself read much of Charles Wagner. 

I suppose it is because I am a little bit too tumultuous 

myself, that I love the rush and vivid realities of life too 

intensely; all its dramatic, flame-colored moments make 

me tingle; Coleridge puts my head in a whirl, and 

Wordsworth I read when I have to. (Shame, thrice 

shame!) "L'Ami" makes me irritated, instead of calm. 

I have more liking for Zola's "L'Assommoir" than for 



TO MRS. CARROLL L. MAXCY 33 

Emerson's essays. All of which is self-revelation rather 
than self-defence. Here, I say, I am, with forty or fifty 
years ahead — and then a blank. Let me then make ab- 
solutely the most out of these years, let me know life, 
let me make each day add to my sum of experience, 
let me tingle to the finger tips — c'est ga. en peu de mots 
les idees qui m'attrayent sans relache. . . . 

... By the way, do you know Shelley? In some re- 
spects he has recently become my favorite poet. He is 
a man who will never be popular, and a man whose work 
is almost always marred by faults, but there is an in- 
extinguishable aspiration, a flaming devotion to the idea, 
in him, that kindles one's blood. 1 have just been tak- 
ing one of my classes through " Prometheus Unbound." 
They could not, of course, understand it; but it was a 
kind of elixir to me. And " Adonais" seems to me both 
in language and sentiment far ahead of " Lycidas.'* My 
class panted and died when they came to " Adonais "; it 
was more than I could do to make them study it. One 
really needs a background of years of poetic training 
before one can reach up with pleasure into the lambent 
atmosphere of such work. ... 

XXIV 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

Oherlin, Ohio 

II March, 1905 

. . . The time is going by with a rush and I am 

glad of it. I am in such a hurry to have the year end, and 

to go chasing will-o'-the-wisps, that 1 rejoice as I pull off 

each laggard sheet from my calendar. 



34 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

But when these first spring days come, with blue-and- 
white sky and robins hopping about the sidewalks, oh, 
but I wish 1 were in WilHamstown ! I dreamed about 
it last night — up on Northwest Hill, above the place 
where we met Mr. Tibbets — looking off against the 
western range — it v/as glorious. This tame, flat, muddy 
country has its good points, I suppose. There is a walk 
out the railroad I take almost every day — just sky, and 
sunset, and long, open stretches of dark fields; it has 
a kind of expansiveness that is impressive — but when 
one thinks of Berkshire, all this becomes insipid and 
commonplace. . . . 

XXV 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

Oberlin, Ohio 

12 March, 1905 
Dear Oliver: 

Your letter came most opportunely at a time 
when it counted for all it was worth, when I was feeling 
a little hungry to have some one say, " I think I under- 
stand what you want to do; if that's the case, then go 
ahead, and with * brief thanksgiving thank whatever gods 
may be ' that you have dreams and half-caught visions. 
Follow after them and let the world wag." I have not 
regretted my decision a single day, but sometimes, when 
I am tired, I feel the " impudence'* of it more than at 
other times. Most of the time I rejoice at the rapidity 
with which the days skip by — each one brings me 
nearer the kind of freedom I need. Here my thoughts 
and daily energies are inevitably wrapped up in my 
work; it is only in my hastily taken leisures — when I 



TO HIS MOTHER 35 

lie down for twenty minutes to rest my eyes, or when I 
go out to walk by myself and follow, as I almost inva- 
riably do, a long, solitary line of railroad track that runs 
through a desolate open land straight up against the 
sunset — it is at such times that I feel very keenly that 
I am shackled by this eternal effort of the classroom. I 
do like the work; it is splendid to feel that, even in a 
feeble and clumsy way, you are helping somebody, per- 
haps many people, to enjoy what is best worthy of en- 
joyment, and to recognize the value of a life for ideals; 
yet all the time you feel that you must think and live 
and write out your own message. I am beginning to feel 
that I have one. I may be incompetent to express it — 
that 's where the big risks lie — but I can only judge 
myself after I have given myself a fair test, and that's 
what I never can achieve so long as my days and nights 
are given to teaching and the like. . . . ^ 

XXVI 

To HIS Mother^ 

Oherlin, Ohio 

I August, 1905 

... I think it is particularly hard for our family 

to say to each other what they really feel, especially 

when they feel very deeply. There are lots of things I 

should like to tell you if I only could, but they won't 

quite go down on paper. . . . 

For your sake I wish that we came nearer to realizing 

father's and your ideals for us. I hope that the every-day 

proofs of our love for you that we can give will in some 

degree take the place of the more complete and perfect 

1 Written after the death of his father. 



36 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

sympathy that we all long for, but seem unable quite to 
reach. 

... My faith is not of the same kind as his or yours, 
and I know that it must always seem to you of a lower 
order, but for all that it is faith, and a faith by which 
I live, and which I hope some day will have been proved 
to bring forth effectual fruit. 

I have only said these — perhaps untimely things — 
because I could n't bear to let you think that I did n't 
realize the added loneliness that may come to you be- 
cause of these — possibly less fundamental than we 
think — differences between us. It certainly makes it 
somewhat harder all around; but in everything is n't it 
necessary to be willing to trust each other where we 
can? . . . 

XXVII 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

3 South Elliott Place 

Brooklyn, i December, 1905 
Dear Comrade: 

I cannot break news gently, I blurt it out in the 
first mouthful. I've had a story accepted by the "At- 
lantic," and that's absolutely the first bit of good luck 
I 've had yet. It is good luck, though, isn't it? and I feel 
prodigiously clever to have landed a thing there of all 
places for a beginner. 

I tell you this is real living down here — almost an 
excess of it. I 've done a lot of work, and I 'm not ashamed 
of it either: but it does n't seem to be any go; and I have 
been brought to see that I can't ever learn to do the kind 
of work the "popular" magazines want. That's quite a 



TO MRS. CARROLL L. MAXCY 37 

disappointment ; for I had rather counted on doing pot- 
boilers for them. I can see myself, though, that the things 
I have written for that purpose don't deserve to succeed 
— even with " Everybody's." 

The other things — the good things — I believe will 
find a place some day, even if they have to be brought 
out posthumously by loyal relatives; and I am more or 
less resigned to the obvious truth that it does n't pay to 
be in too much of a hurry. 

For the last few weeks — being in a desperate way 
financially — I have been hunting for a job: but as yet 
unsuccessfully. Armed with letters of introduction 1 
first made the round of the magazines and publishing- 
houses. When that was over I resolved to follow the 
counsel of friends and make a plunge into newspaper- 
reporting — for the sake, as they said, of the prac- 
tice and experience. Thus resolved I went the merry- 
go-round of all the dailies and emerged — ready for 
burial. Since then for the last week or two I have been 
at work on Sunday specials and the like — without suc- 
cess. 

However, that's all a part of the game, and in the 
midst of all my woe, 1 Ve been glad every day that I was 
alive. It may be a bit disappointing, but at the same 
time it's keenly interesting — there's so much variety 
and vividness in the thing. 

I want to tell you all about the rest of my career, 
which has been full of adventures and discoveries; but 
I have n't any business to take the time now, in view 
of the fact that I am at work on a "special" — a mas- 
terpiece which I am sure ought to break the editor's 
heart. 



38 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

It will be the greatest fun in the world to see you 
again, and you need n't have a moment's question about 
my "having time" to be social. It is understood, of 
course, that you prefer threadbare suits on the backs 
of your men friends. 

I Ve been living a life of sweet obscurity for once in 
my life; not a soul to care whether I go or come, an ir- 
responsible and unknown atom. I should n't choose it, 
I guess, forever, but for a while I like the sensation. I 
don't believe a dozen people know my address. . . . 

XXVIII 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

3 South Elliott Place 

Brooklyn, 2 April, 1906 
Dear Jean: 

It was good of you to let me know of your grati- 
fication over my promotion to a "legitimate" position 
[on the "Atlantic Monthly"], even if your feelings had 
some qualification of disappointment in them that it 
was outside of Manhattan. For myself, I confess that 
I hate to leave this ugly but glorious city, for which I 
have a quite unreasoning affection. Aside from Paris, 
which is beautiful as well as glorious, I don't believe I 
could ever like any city so much — its superb energy, 
its startling contrasts, its infinite variety, they all keep 
one's perceptions alert and vivid. However, the comfort 
remains that New York will still be here for me to re- 
turn to when the time comes. . . . 

It is also a little late to discuss further the Oberlin de- 
cision, except that you will see my virtual agreement 
with your judgment in the matter. What you probably 



TO OLIVER M. WIARD 39 

can hardly feel as I do is my consuming desire to do 
efficient and contributive work, and to do nothing of 
which I cannot feel justly proud. I have a horror of 
being ineffectual, and an equal horror of being second- 
best among those with whom I am working. I know so 
well my unusual faculty for teaching-work that the 
assured reputation and authority I should soon win in 
that field appeal to me tremendously. But of that no 
more. My decision is made. And if I am to enroll myself 
among the second-best in another line — why, that's 
now in God's hands. 

I had a delightful evening at the Belasco. Mr. Dean, 
the manager, was most agreeable and showed me all the 
mechanism of the stage; and after making the rounds 
with me, told me to pass the remainder of the evening 
wandering around as I chose. I spent most of my time 
on a lofty perch behind the proscenium arch, where I 
could see the front-stage and the audience through a 
little hole in the prop, and at the same time see all the 
bustle and contrasted activity behind the scenes — the 
wind-machines at work, the bagsful of white paper- 
clippings thrown behind the windows for snow, the firing 
of revolvers under carpeting for distant shots, etc. I will 
tell you a great deal more of this if you care to listen 
when I see you next. . . . 

XXIX 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

Boston, Mass. 

8 May, 1906 

... As it turned out, I did not leave New York 

until Monday, April 30, after all, sacrificing every ves- 



40 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

tige of a home trip on the altar of reputation. I came 
through by boat — had a wonderful night under sailing 
moon and a thousand stars — and reached Boston in 
time for a decent appearance Tuesday morning. Every 
one at the office is marvellously agreeable so far, and I 
have found the effort of adjustment and acclimatization 
almost nugatory. My little private workroom looks out 
cornerwise across the ancient gravestones and fresh green 
turf of the Tremont Street burial-ground. 

I spent the first three nights rather happily in Cam- 
bridge, but found myself at the end of that time quite 
ready to move into my newly adopted quarters in a 
beautiful, old-fashioned house just off Mount Vernon 
Street — three crooked flights up — a large front room 
with three windows, two of which look toward the river 
— look toward but do not quite see, because of a new- 
fangled apartment house recently set on the next street 
to profane the landscape. 

. . . Louisburg Square — this whole hill with its beau- 
tiful old brick houses is a perennial source of joy to me; 
the sense of surprise after New York is not yet gone — 
and the silence of a Boston night seems almost guilty. . . . 

XXX 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Boston, Mass. 

24 May, 1906 
. . . Yet if my opportunity is here, please God I 
have the willingness to take it with pious joy. And there 
are many compensations. To wit: the gardens, which are 
more beautiful than any I have ever seen elsewhere — • 
just now a bewildering glory of pansies, azaleas, and 



TO HIS SISTER 4k 

gilly-flowers — with locusts and wistaria making the 
air heavy with sweetness. Then there is an undeniable 
picturesqueness about "old" Beacon Hill — now, as 
you know, falling into a yellow decay — steep streets of 
ancient brick houses, with iron balconies and chimney- 
pots. 

. . . Have you seen W. A. White's new book " In Our 
Town" — a collection of Kansas sketches? It is a mas- 
terpiece of its kind, and its "manners" are done de- 
liciously. I should like to do work which is as keen and 
at the same time as kindly, but my humor seems to run 
into the satirical a little too easily. 

On my twenty-sixth birthday I incline to be serious, 
and to wonder, somewhat pensively, what the future 
conceals. I begin to see, though, that the satisfactions of 
life are not in having attained, but in the struggle and 
expectancy of attaining : and in that I can certainly find 
a great present joy. I have felt more this past year than 
ever before the real delight of adventure in life, the zest 
of playing hard and for high stakes. I realize, too, as I 
come back to Cambridge and mix once more with the 
men I used to know so intimately, that I have lived a 
great deal in the last two years. Beside them I feel like 
a prophet in Israel. ... 

XXXI 

To HIS Sister 

Boston, Mass. 

29 JunCy 1906 

... I am sending you a little book of poems — 

"The Shropshire Lad" — of which I think I have spoken 

more than once. I am sure you'll like some of the verses. 



42 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

and I am almost sure that others of them you won't 
quite Hke: but, anyway, they all have the merit, if Tm 
not mistaken, of being interesting. And to my ear they 
sound refreshingly unaffected and sincere. . . . 

XXXII 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

Boston, Mass, 

21 July, 1906 
. . . These warm days I find so enervating that I 
am not attempting any original writing of my own. Fur- 
thermore, my eyes are doing well enough so that I make 
considerable time for reading of evenings. A play or two 
of Beaumont and Fletcher (how I enjoy these courtly 
rascals — and what poetry they do sometimes get 
off!); Pierre Loti's "Vers Ispahan," a volume of Persian 
travels and very delightful — like all Loti full of the 
senses — light and heat and desert reflections; and 
George Meredith's "The Egoist,'* which seems to me 
the finest piece of contemporary high-comedy I have 
ever read, delicate, keen as a scalpel, and urbane, — 
human, too, — more so than Flaubert by far, though 
without the latter's "composition" and concision. . . . 

XXXIII 

To THE Same 

Boston, Mass. 

2 October, 1906 
... My vacation in Cape Breton was good for 
me. I was out of doors almost all the time, picking fox- 
berries on Kavanaugh's Head, wandering out alone 
across the barrens (do you remember that tall, rocky 



TO THE SAME 43 

hill over the marshes toward Barrassois? — I sat on it 
all one afternoon) — or driving in the Jeans' jumpseat to 
Petit de Grat. The wonder and beauty — the poetry of 
that land! I think the spell of it for me will never lessen. 
More remote and unmodem than Brittany, and pos- 
sessed of an undefined largeness and sweep which belong 
to the territories of the North — vague, extensive, mys- 
terious. And the shift and marvel of the sea! If you could 
have seen it, brimming flush up to the sky on all sides, a 
glimpse here and a whole quarter there between Gros 
Nez and Cap le Rond — indigo, caerulean, opalescent, 
with a hint of all the spectrum flashing through its glit- 
tering and eternal metamorphosis: never the same, yet 
always itself — itself only through change. I never felt 
the life and strength of it so deeply — and the diminu- 
tion, almost to the vanishing point of my own petty per- 
sonality — or, rather, to be more accurate, the disap- 
pearance of any mere myself in the sense, overwhelming 
and effacing, of the whole — as if the me and the not me 
had lost their demarcations. The perspective in which I 
then envisaged my last five years was, as you may con- 
ceive, a new and illuminating one, such as to throw into 
prominence incidents, decisions, moments of apprehen- 
sion which at the time had seemed insignificant enough. 
. . . Sometimes it seems to me that I shall go mad 
here, my life is so without accomplishment of the kind 
I crave and have made sacrifices for. Week after week 
goes by, and still there is nothing to mark their passage 
save office work passably well done and, I hope, a grad- 
ually increasing accumulation of data and a truer vision 
in regard to life and its interpretation. Sometimes I 
think that I will throw over my job at the first oppor- 



44 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

tunity, and once more give myself completely to my own 
chosen work: I would do better at that than before; yet 
I dread it and question the wisdom of it. . . . 

I spent another Sunday, tramping over quiet and re- 
poseful hills with my friend B . He is to me an exceed- 
ingly interesting man, a sort of Olympian, with a vigor- 
ous, very masculine, and somewhat moody mind, which 
chafes so at compromises that it verges on atrabilious- 
ness: a man who insults his friends without meaning to, 
and who is forgiven as a matter of course. He never 
talks unless he feels like it, and that sets me at ease with 
him: we can walk fifteen minutes witl^out exchanging a 
word. After all, the man who really insults friendship is 
not the man who speaks without regard, but the man 
who speaks incessantly, as if all his feeblest and most 
trivial thoughts demanded your attention. . . . 

XXXIV 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

Boston, Mass. 

I December, 1906 
... A few things have kept me straight: a cold 
bath every morning, a music lesson every week and the 
necessity of a certain time of diligent practice, and last, 
occasional evenings of (refined) gayety which I have 
indulged in not as much because I felt gay as because I 
needed a tonic. I have found a lovely little Italian res- 
taurant, the Napoli, where we will dine when next you 
honor us with your presence. There have been a few nice 
shows, too, notably "Madame Butterfly" — Puccini's 
new opera — which I saw wonderfully well given. The 
music is full of unexpected and indescribable charm, and 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 45 

in parts seems to me as marvellous as any opera-score 
I ever listened to — so full of atmosphere and color, the 
magic and fragrance of the East. The story is common 
and vulgar enough, but the setting was perfect — Fuji- 
yama, and the Sea, and the Wedding Festival with 
scattered cherry blossoms, etc. . . . 

Did you know that I turned down a chance to go back 
to Oberlin as associate professor? At the time the offer 
came I was feeling terribly disconsolate, and almost de- 
cided to throw up the game and go back; but something 
kept me from doing it. Perhaps my bad angel. 

The whole episode, however, made me feel so clearly 
that I had made a sacrifice, and that that sacrifice was 
not for commercial success or for position, but for the 
chance I wanted to give myself of doing creative work, 
that I shall not be at all surprised if, before very long, 
now, I should give up this present work at H. M. & Co. 
and go back to free-lancing. I Ve got to get more time 
no matter what it may cost. I am not giving myself a 
fair chance: it's impossible for me to do my best when 
I spend seven hours a day in the office and can only do 
my own work when I 'm tired and out of sorts. . . . 

XXXV 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Boston, Mass. 

7 December, 1906 
... I begin to make the cowardly admission to 
myself that my friends must take me for what I am: 
and that, being dedicated to a consuming and relent- 
less ambition, many of the most amenable and desirable 
things of life must be treated with less recognition than 



46 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

they for their own sakes deserve. If I were only a little 
stronger, or my eyes a little more reliable, or if I did n't 
have to earn a living by the beads upon my brow — but, 
alas, compromise and concession seem the only modus 
Vivendi — and even then my soul starves. 

That story you wrote so pleasantly of, — " I hope it 
is now completed and well-marketed," you said, — it 
was not even revised when your letter came; I could not 
possibly get it done until Thanksgiving week, labor 
with what zeal I might (and God knows I was almost 
sick of it!). The fortunate aspect of the matter, however, 
was that I sold it, the next day, to the "Atlantic,'* and 
thus made enough to pay ten weeks* board bill and to 
go home over the holiday and to get a new suit of clothes. 
It*s really a very pretty little story, I think: though I 
can't agree with Greenslet that it's the best I've done: 
it 's too frankly frivolous, trop pour rire, to strike a very 
high number on the scale. "Thomas and his Isobel," I 
christened it, finally — Thomas being the sentimental, 
pensive, and confidential little "tonsorial artist" devel- 
oped out of a mere sketch in an unsuccessful story I 
wrote you of last year, and Isobel, his unwilling and re- 
fractory sweetheart, being the graduate of a Commercial 
College, and possessed of many modern ideas. At the end 
they kiss and hug each other, which is eternally pleasant 
(I mean in a story). 

... I suppose you are justified in thinking me a little 
thriftless: I hate to admit it, though. Actually I am 
bewildered by the constant demands upon my scanty 
hoardings — so much greater than when I lived frankly 
in Bohemia and had no state to maintain, no conven- 
tions to live up to. Now I have to dress, to live in a good 



TO OLIVER M. WIARD 47 

room, to eat at a respectable table, to make calls, to ac- 
cept dinner invitations — and the fact that I loathe the 
whole ruck of it makes no difference. Add to this occa- 
sional liberalities in the way of entertaining real friends, 
or of remembering members of my family who are more 
or less in want (did you know that my two African sis- 
ters had been burnt out, and lost all their personal prop- 
erty — clothes, books, linen, etc.?), and, still further, the 
necessary expenditures that my immortal soul may not 
be extinguished, such as little dinners at hotels, and oc- 
casional evenings at the theatre; and — I wonder that I 
manage to get along at all. Of course, it's extravagant 
and reprehensible — mais on m'a fait comme fa, and I 
am reconciled to always being poor in this world's 
goods. I don't complain: it is more fun to be generous 
than to be parsimonious, and youth is a fugitive and 
golden thing. . . . 

XXXVI 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

Boston, Mass. 

6 March, 1907 
... I expect to begin work in New York about 
the third week in April. For many reasons I am eager to 
get back, though as yet my physical being is n't quite 
keyed up to the stress of metropolitan life; and the de- 
mure sobriety and well-established, self-contained beauty 
of this jolie petite ville de Boston appeals to me as never 
before. The sweet view from my window across steep- 
sloping roofs — the glimpses as I descend Mount Ver- 
non Street of the broad, wind-swept river with its low 
centipedal bridge — the spaciousness of the Common 



48 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

— all these I find myself especially sensitive to, now 
that I am so soon to leave them. I dread the world as 
much as I love it. The ingle-blaze and the security of 
ancient things is very dear to me, and it is only when my 
vitality is high that the spirit of adventure takes prece- 
dence over that of reclusion. . . . 

XXXVH 

To Ferris Greenslet 

New York City 

20 May, 1907 

... Tm not writing but ten words, because it 

would give you the impression that I 'm a man of leisure, 

whereas, Dieu le sait, assiduity in business is my present 

motto. 

But industrious or idle, it's a golden thing to be alive 
in New York. Saturday afternoon I went to a Claude 
Monet Exhibition; dined at Murray's, and talked an 
evening of Mother Eddy et al. Yesterday I went to the 
Paulists, lunched at Schoeffel's, travelled on top of the 
"coach" up Fifth Avenue to the Park (not the Menag- 
erie), dined at the Students' ; and went to the Metropoli- 
tan to hear Sembrich in the evening. Naturally I'm 
poor; but that 's chronic and inevitable. 

To-day and henceforth for a week, it's work like Hell. . . . 

XXXVIII 
To Mrs. Mathews-Richardson 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

25 August, 1907 

... I am glad you saw things that were worth 

while in that book review. I spent an unconscionable 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 49 

amount of time on it, and tried to do a little thinking on 
my own account, since I had so slight a literary back- 
ground to rely upon. Perhaps my thoughts are growing 
up a little, as you suggest. Sometimes I feel terribly old. 
A good deal of my experience, of course, has been vicari- 
ous; but I suppose a man of a certain impressionability 
of mind can learn a good deal in that second-hand way. 
I shall be interested to know what you think of a story 
I sold not long ago to "Harper's" — about a rather 
mudgish young man who met a dryad one day in the 
woods : and had the chance to stay there always as her 
playmate, but finally decided to go back to the ribbon 
counter. . . . 

XXXIX 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

New York City 

16 September, 1907 
. . . When I consider all that I want to do, at 
once, without impediment or delay, I am overcome. My 
novel! My comedy! Reviewing for the "Tribune" and 
the "Nation." Another story. A poem. A travel essay 
for "Harper's." And I shall do so little of all this, and 
so slowly and laboriously. 

Fortunately I am in excellent health. My quiet, not 
too busy summer was good for me. I am tan clear to the 
marrow. I have been almost daily in the salt water, ca- 
pering with wild wind and wave. 

... It seems rather good to be here in the city once 
more, though my mind turns with pensive longing to all 
the freedom I have left. It is a dull moment of the year 
in town, when things waver between summer indolences 



50 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

and frivolities and the nervous ambition of autumn and 
winter. But my little Twelfth-Street room is as engaging 
as ever: the trees are green outside, and to-day the rain 
drips rustlingly, gleamingly from the slender branches. 

... I am sorry if I seemed to speak not too approv- 
ingly of your de Maupassant studies. I certainly felt 
nothing but approbation. I think Maupassant has been 
rather overrated of late: I am tired of the eminence upon 
which all textbooks and the ordinary dabbler in things 
literary set him; blinded by his technical superiority 
into undiscernment of his curious and morbid limita- 
tions. I should like to see some one work out on paper 
the thesis that no kind of plot is so easy to work out or 
possesses so high a degree of inherent consecutiveness, 
as the pessimistically bent one. Great ills from slight 
mistakes, etc. ; an evil twist in fate, etc. ; one could go on 
endlessly — that is the ever ready-to-hand material. 

I have just finished the reading of Balzac's " Menage 
de Garfon.'* It is a good story, though singularly uneven 
in workmanship — some portions of it being no better 
than farce, and all the latter end of it seeming perfunc- 
tory and artificial; but some scenes of the story are in 
Balzac's best vein — and that is high praise — at least 
from me, who am coming to feel that Balzac is the master 
from whom we may expect, and get, the most "alive" 
setting-forth of life. " Illusions Perdues" impresses me, 
as, on the whole, the finest novel I have ever read. Dur- 
ing the winter Oliver and I have read much aloud: al- 
most the first occasion since our Dumas seances when I 
have had the delight of listening to French "lecture" 
habitually. 

. . . You will be entertained at learning that I have 



TO FERRIS GREENSLET 51 

purchased (or am purchasing, and shall be, for some 
time to come) a piano: a very lovely thing, a Knabe up- 
right, which is bringing great joy to my lonely heart. I 
have undertaken the transaction partly as a moral dis- 
cipline (for it will jorce economy) and partly for much 
nobler reasons — the soothing, for example, of my sav- 
age breast. . . . 

XL 

To Ferris Greenslet 

}<lew York City 

3 November, 1907 

... Mr. M sent me some (poor) novels last 

week. Perhaps you will pass a friendly glance over my 
somewhat desperate endeavors to combine justice and 
mercy. 

I spent a wicked amount of time on the damned 
things; but I think it stimulated my growth in things of 
spirit. 

I had a most agreeable short call on Mr. C not 

long since. He was cordial to a degree, and said that a 
little later in the fall he should want to send me some 
books for *' entertaining, sprightly, not too profound 
comment.*' We parted on a promising handshake. 

Since my return to this metropolitan campaign I 
have been far too busy for content. Some Gulick ar- 
ticles for the "Outlook" have swallowed and englutted 
me. And now that three of them are done, here's the 
"World's Work" rampant, paws in the air, canines ex- 
posed, and I 've promised them a tardy something by 
Wednesday. That's why I knock off for a while and 
send voice of greeting to you from the deep. . . . 



52 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

XLI 

To THE Same 

New York City 

I December, 1907 
. . . These last two weeks I have jumped into my 
story for all there was in me. I think I can get it done by 
the first week in February, and I find myself more con- 
fident than a while ago of its merit — and interest, too. 
I am glad to feel so (even if it's a delusion) because it 
makes me work with more relish — after Christmas 
I Ve got to work three weeks to earn some money (damn 
these crass necessities) ; then I mean to cut out every- 
thing for as long as need be (living on pulse and water) 
in order to reach a conclusion. This is the happy privi- 
lege of unentangled youth. 

... I believe that — a partir de chap. X I ou alentours 
— the action will take up its bed and walk; never run, 
perhaps, but go at a decent, satisfactory gait. We will see 
that it does, by visiting the Pool of Bethesda ourselves. 

... I am going to do your bidding in the matter of 
prayerful contemplation of the ending, but 't is only 
fair to say that the abandonment of my earlier firm in- 
tention seemed forced upon me — quite contra volunta- 
tem — by the nature of the tale. I don't feel that there 
is any more inconclusiveness here than the nature of 
things compels. Michel's love is certain and will hold 
him — bring him back. Does n't the reader feel that? 
Our knowledge of Amedee makes us foresee the tempta- 
tions to which the boy will be subjected; and I should 
feel (myself) an unhappy repetitiousness in presenting 
them anew. And as Amedee came out of them, so his 
son will. . . . 



TO THE SAME 53 

. . . There is one very practical diificulty — named, 
my own ignorance of the technicology of sea-Hfe. I 
would hate to fake anything. I don't think I have, as 
yet, faked anything. I know plenty of sailors, to be sure, 
but I don't know the sea save in its pictorial and imagi- 
native aspects; and it would be necessary, I think, to 
have the real sea bulk rather largely in Michel's experi- 
ences from henceforth. ... 

XLII 

To THE Same 

149 West Twelfth Street 
New York City 
I April, 1908 
Dear Ferris: 

That last word of your note was well added, and 
is helping to keep me from futile discouragement during 
some very dark days. I had little idea when I last saw 
you that a succession of most exciting and distracting 
events v/as on its way over the horizon; they began hit- 
ting me about two days later. I thought that the sus- 
pense over the fate of Amedee's son would be as much 
as I could readily carry, but I find that there is no limit : 
you can carry everything that comes; father confessor- 
ship to a couple of psychasthenics in emotional whirl- 
winds, bedside counsels to the mortally sick; and chief 
sympathizer and adviser in the professional crisis of a 
dear friend, which has been an affair of life-and-death 
moment to him. Added to this, a financial stringency 
such as I have never known before, and an unsuccessful 
attempt at prying open several closed doors, which I had 
hoped might lead to a little de quoi vivre. . . . 



54 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

XLHI 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

New York City 

13 May, 1908 
Dear Oliver: 

A midsummer afternoon of May. The solid tufts 
of shiny, red-green foliage on the ailanthus trees are 
rapidly opening, spreading their plumes, thrusting out 
their tender green spikes, vibrating and rustling in the 
warm breeze. Down the block the linden tree is shim- 
mering in its full summer habiliment. Across the yards 
some wistarias are hanging in prime bloom, and a but- 
terfly is hovering over the lilac bush across the fence. On 
the neighboring step lies Smith, in an attitude of dejec- 
tion, too hot even to bark. As I write these words he 
awakens and bursts into a spasm of aboyement; now 
quiets down again, while a large fly settles on his hair- 
veiled nose. . . . 

Your little disquisition on Amiens (too temperate 
and discriminating to be called a rhapsody) revived 
all my old wonder and admiration for that miraculous 
edifice, which I seem to know better than any other in 
the world, though for so brief a time in its presence. 
But it was my first, and it was my last; two moments 
of great impressionability; and I have only to shut my 
eyes and it springs into substantial being before me. 

Our days pass quietly enough here. A fortnight ago 
I was at home for half a week, in an ecstasy over the 
lovely season just then beginning its bloom and veiling 
greenness. But more than half my time was self-im- 
prisonment. I cut myself away from all allurements, and 
sternly compelled my reluctant hands to hew out that 



TO THE SAME 55 

dreadful last chapter of "Amedee's Son." In the end, 
the thing came out as well as could be wished, I think, 
though for a time I was desperate about it. But it's 
quite passionate in a lyrical, young-love way — and says 
a few things better than I have ever said them before. 

A while ago I began a series of stories imagined as 
told by La Rose to Michel, and wrote out three of them. 
"La Rose Witnesseth " — " Of La Belle-Melanie, who 
encountered that Death-Fire on the barrens, but es- 
caped from it alive, by telling all the truth." 

"Of Old Simeon Leblanc, who drove his son from 
home in anger, and later the son came back again, 
grown rich, from Boston, or somewhere." 

"Of those Bucherons, who defrauded a poor widow, 
and how they were tormented for that in many ways." 

It was great fun to write them, and if I succeed in sell- 
ing them, I hope to do some more in the same vein. . . . 

XLIV 

Tc THE Same 

149 fVest Twelfth Street 

New York City 
5 June, 1908 
. . . This is not to be a letter; I am tired, listless 
and incapacitated and there 's no news, or next to none. 
Everything is green and lovely outside: our yards are 
a bower of waving, murmurous seduction. I sit at my 
desk through the day gazing through the open door, and 
wonder if ever there was a lovelier, more desirable spot. 
This week has been almost without interruptions, too, 
affording that peace and cultivatibility of mood which is 
necessary with me for good work; and I have been writ- 



56 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

ing an excellent story. I think it will be the last of this 
spring's fictional labors, which for that matter I have 
greatly enjoyed. I feel the growth of my ability; I know 
that my work is remarkable: alive, poetic, and full of 
power. It has n't received a welcome; but that's an in- 
cident against which my soul doth not rebel. . . . 

XLV 

To Professor Carroll L. Maxcy 

149 West Twelfth Street 

New York City 

29 September, 1908 
Dear Carroll: 

Your letter made me very happy. I like to think 
that your commendation of "Amedee" is not tinctured 
by friendly partiality — but for that matter, even if it 
were, 't were a lovable fault in you. One works so long in 
secret, and without any sure justification for the effort, 
on a thing of that sort, that when the reward of hearty 
praise comes, it is divinely welcome. I agree with you 
thoroughly that the story betters as it advances. I like 
to think that a part of this increasing appeal is due to the 
quietly developed feeling of veracity and of a many- 
sided, well-familiarized community life which comes 
out of the earlier chapters, bare as they are of dramatic 
interest on their own account. My own favorite chap- 
ters, as you might surmise, are the two that present 
Amedee's letters and the scene on the barrens at night 
with La Rose; and also the next to the final chapter — 
the lovers in the cimetiere. My first great pleasure in 
writing was in descriptive work, as you may recall : then 



TO PROFESSOR CARROLL L. MAXCY 57 

came, gradually, a dominating interest in characters, es- 
pecially as developed by dialogue. The actual business 
of telling a story is a sort of acquired faculty with me: 
and I still have much to learn. But I think that when I 
try again, and take a metropolitan milieu (as I shall) in- 
stead of a remote parish, the dramatic gift, in so far as I 
possess it, will come to the fore. You do not say any- 
thing of my humor, for which I, personally, have no end 
of relish, and which I rank among my best possessions. I 
am not absolutely certain that I did right to let it in- 
trude into the climax scene — where La Rose tells so 
seriously of the girl who " had all her hair cut off in se- 
cret": yet I was utterly powerless to resist the impulse 
to insert that illustration, once the idea of it had popped 
into my head: and of this at least I am convinced. La 
Rose would have used it; and that gives it a kind of ap- 
propriateness, whether or not it is emotionally in key. 
And I incline to believe that it makes the scene secure 
from any charge of slushiness. 

For myself, after a discouraging vacation and a sharp, 
severe attack of my old skin trouble, I am rapidly re- 
gaining all lost ground, and shall soon feel glad to be at 
work. The autumn is not brilliant in its prospects or 
financial peripeteias (I know I mis-spell, but I 'm too in- 
dolent to look up the word) ; but I shall plug along some- 
how, with my reviewing and my tutoring, and a story or 
two to help out if I have the inspiration. 

I hope great things from my play, "Joyous Julian " ; but 
am prepared to possess my soul indefinitely in patience. 
Transactions on the Rialto are wondrous leisurely. 

Always loyally yours, 

Harry James Smith 



58 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

XLVI 
To Oliver M. Wiard 

149 West Twelfth Street 

New York City 

13 November, 1908 
Dear Boy: 

Your last letter with its blue Italian stamp has 
Iain on my desk, collecting dust longer than would be 
excusable under most circumstances. Of late it has 
seemed to me that there was no help for it but I must 
deliberately resign the blessed ties of friendly inter- 
course and take advantage of all the opportunities which 
the fall is offering for establishing myself money-wise. I 
am never quite sure that a man is justified in setting any 
kind of temporal advantage above human relations, 
even for a however brief space of time: yet I seem to be 
built on a plan which almost precludes a combination of 
the two interests; and while absorbed in the worship of 
Mammon I cannot find the humor for congenial inter- 
course. There is no sense of leisure; no time for the induc- 
tion of the spirit; whatever one may bring forth is pre- 
sented in the hard, unfavoring light of common day, with 
none of the warm, transforming radiance that a real 
letter needs for its very life. Well, to-day I Ve a Httle 
time. At eleven this morning I finished typewriting a 
lengthy review for the "Tribune," and at once carried it 
down to the office. Now it is a little after twelve; I have 
glanced through the paper, re-read my day's mail, 
played a few times, and am in the most amiable mood 
for a week. This afternoon I have two English themes 
to correct and send off, and this evening we are to dine 
at Corchini's and then to hear "Samson and Delilah" 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 59 

at the Manhattan — our first opera. That lovely Ger- 
ville-Reache, whom you probably recall as the white- 
haired queen in " Pelleas," has the Delilah role. I wish 
they would put Renaud down as Samson, but Dalmores 
is to sing it. 

Once having recovered my health, I have remained 
unusually energetic and happy. Now and then a sulky 
day comes (yesterday was one) when I cannot work. 
Like Johnny McPhee, I "must sit there helpless before 
it in an agony, but unable to raise a finger." The fact 
distresses me, and I sincerely wish I could get the bet- 
ter of it. It seems to be the curse of an independently 
guided career, at least with me. The compulsion must 
for the most part come from within; and when the tide 
ebbs, there's no way of holding yourself to the grind — 
most of all if you are, like me, afflicted with a subtle and 
casuistically bent conscience, prolific in excuses for self- 
indulgence. " Really you need a rest," says conscience, 
refusing to concede your abundant sense of well-being. 
"You are not very strong; now and then you must let 
up a little. Besides, yesterday you earned fifteen dol- 
lars." Thus goes the logomachy of a bad day, and night 
comes, and I am tired and ashamed and restless and re- 
morseful, and full of good resolutions for the future. . . . 

XLVII 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn. 

22 May, 1909 
. . . One thing I discovered from my hospital ex- 
periences, and that is, how easy it is to die. I think I 
told you they watched for my extinction at any mo- 



6o LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

ment during two days. I was half out of my head, in a 
raging fever, but only dully, wearily in pain, and the 
thought of annihilation — of cessation — became most 
appealing. Of course I have never seemed to have any 
dread of death, such as oppresses many people: I always 
contemplate it with equanimity: but I have supposed 
somehow that the actual experience would be hard; 
that in last hours one would have a panicky clinging to 
life. I feel as if I had been through it actually, and had 
found out that it is only a happy — or rather, dispas- 
sionate — relinquishment of a thing no longer desired. . . . 

XLVIII 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Revonah Hill, Liberty, N. Y. 

I J June, 1909 
Really those convalescent weeks were hell. 
There was about every new effort or old hope that hor- 
rible sense of futility; and the new burden of working 
and living and paying debts — my God ! such debts — 
was more than I could bring myself to assume. Fortu- 
nately there was a flower garden, and no gardener at 
hand but myself. As soon as I was able to hold a trowel 
I began digging; and with the daily increasing efficacy 
of that purely physical labor and with the healthy, 
thought-drugging fatigue that resulted nightly from it, 
I secured the key to mental restoration. It was most in- 
teresting to me to watch the change in myself; and by 
the time I had left home I had taken the grim resolu- 
tion (at first very grim, with set teeth) to see the fight 
through, and to show 'em I could win out even with a 
tombstone tied round my neck. 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 6i 

I spent a few awful days in New York — scene of 
wrecked hopes and happy past — and then came on to 
this Httle shack in the mountains — the "hinter-Kats- 
kills" — where a sister, a Zulu girl, and myself consti- 
tute an amusing but happy household — Zuleika deal- 
ing much with pots and pans, and in her leisure moments 
reading "Esmond" aloud to my sister: myself tramp- 
ing, riding, gardening (like Celeste, j 'adore un jardin 
potagier), woodcutting; lastly, beginning a little writ- 
ing. I don't do much of that at once, but it keeps me 
contented; and before many more weeks are past I hope 
to be up to schedule time. 

Tm just finishing my first story: it's extremely light 
— as much so as my ** Lorelei," but more worth-while, 
and rather more genial: a little satire on the irrespon- 
sibiHty of love in May — when you must be in love 
whether or no with some one, not much matter whom. 

... I am going to be here probably until the last of 
September, and then at home in the country for the 
winter, abandoning Grub Street and trying to do some- 
thing big. . . . 

XLIX 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Liberty, N.Y. 

21 September, 1909 
. . . Aside from galling disappointments health- 
wise, there has been much in the summer that should 
stay happily in memory: long nights under stars, won- 
derful brilliant wind-swept days, with uncounted leagues 
of green earth spread out below: the congenial society 
of my favorite sister: occasional visits from friends — 



62 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

Faith has just left us for her last year in Oberlin; and 
when I have been able, lovely walks through upland 
woods. ... 

L 

To THE Same 

Berlin, Conn. 

6 November, 1909 
. . . Since October my record is much, much 
more presentable. I had an invigorating sojourn by the 
sea in my doctor's snug little bungalow, warmed — 
when the winds blew chilly — by a pretty grate fire, 
and cheered every evening by the company of one of 
the best fellows in the world. I shall long remember our 
long, desultory, stimulatingly masculine talks before 

the fire, pipes and bottle within hand-reach. MacD 

resembles in certain respects the hero of my story in the 
"American" — have you happened to see it? — but he 
is much more complex, more responsive: infinitely com- 
panionable, deliciously profane: full of good stories — 
not anecdotes — out of his own irregular and dramatic 
history: approaching every subject of thought or dis- 
cussion with a fine pristine freshness of view. It always 
does me good to be with him. I was alone through the 
daytime: finished revising my play (I hear encouraging 
things of its prospects), and did what work I was able on 
my novel. Even now I can't begin to work at my old 
best : but I see a steady gain in efficiency. The gain was 
most perceptible during those weeks. In the afternoon 
I always took my market-basket into Quincy — two 
miles or more distant by trolley — and did my family 
marketing; and by the time Jack came home, at seven. 



TO THE SAME 63 

I would have a kingly dinner prepared for him. We 
would dawdle unconscionably over our meal, with 
smokes and Benedictine, each dreading the moment 
when the other would say, "How about the dishes? 
Shall we do 'em or not?" 

I have been home now for about a week. I have a 
large sunny southwest room, which holds my piano, a 
desk, a couch, and other necessities of the literary life : 
and here I spend most of my time, devoting myself to 
" Enchanted Ground." I must get the thing done, they 
tell me, by January ist, if I want spring publication. 
I do immensely want just that; and I am sacrificing 
everything to this undertaking, with the chances much 
against me, I must admit, for succeeding. My furtive 
hope is that they'll concede me more time if I verge on 
completion by January. . . . 

LI 

To THE Same 

Berlin, Conn. 

23 February, 19 10 
. . . During a brief happy flight in Boston I saw 
Maude Adams at last in " What Every Woman Knows," 
and was rather bored: I saw "Shore Acres," for the first 
time, at the Castle Square, and marvelled to see how all 
its rusty, dilapidated machinery of laughs and tears 
could still be so effective with a second-class audience. 
And in New York — this latest trip — I saw Fitch's 
" City," which is, I think, next to the " Kreutzer So- 
nata" (Bertha Kalich's slum-life play of some years 
since), the most hideous thing in my experience — hide- 
ous, without a mitigating touch of poetry or true tragic 



64 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

insight. Add an operetta, " Fra Diavolo/' and a comic 
opera, "The Midnight Sons," and you have my mid- 
winter's record. . . . 

You will infer that I have decided adversely in regard 
to the "Nation" offer. My answer was sent last week. I 
am resolved not to retreat from my present stand, even 
if it means worse than penury for some time to come. It 
does mean that. " Enchanted Ground" is not to be pub- 
lished until September. It was considered by several of 
the Boston folk extremely offensive and immoral, and 
so great was the hue and cry that three weeks were con- 
sumed in wrangling discussions before the cause of 
Truth won. Greenslet was my stanch advocate, believ- 
ing the story a masterpiece. But the lengthy fracas put 
spring publication out of the question. Having accepted 
the book, the company have since then done every- 
thing to make me reconciled: promising "sumptuous" 
manufacture, diplomatic preparation, and handsome 
royalties. At present I am putteringly getting started on 
a new play — a comedy, from which something may 
sometime be hoped. This being only my second day of 
serious thought on the plot, I do not feel greatly sanguine 
— but that 's inevitable with me at the start. . . . 

LI I 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Berlin, Conn, 

3 June, 19 10 
. . . And now I am agonizing with the com- 
mencement of a new novel, rather a fluffy thing, that 
has a kernel of promise in it: but, oh, it looks rotten so 
far ~ I mean, as far as the middle of Chapter I. I'm 



TO OLIVER M. WIARD 65 

stuck there, blasphemously; and God knows whether I 
shall write a decent word until the end of the month, 
when I hope to be down in Cape Breton, with nothing 
to do but be happy and create masterpieces. . . . 

Have you read "Chantecler"? You must. It's intel- 
lectual intoxication, and full of the real rainbow things. 

LIII 
To Oliver M. Wiard 

The Marlborough, Halifax 

25 June, 1 9 10 
... I wish you were here, to revel with me in 
this adorable city, and to go on with me, Tuesday, to 
Isle Madame. Your letter recalls most vividly to mind 
the almost perfect, incomparable days we had three 
years since in Cape Breton. I hate to think that they 
will not repeat themselves. It seems wrong for me to be 
going thither without you. But I shall try to see, some- 
times, with your eyes, as well as with my own, that 
landscape so dear to both of us. 

As for Halifax, I never imagined it could so deeply 
appeal to me. I love the hilly streets, the green mount 
that tops all; the narrow, far-outreaching harbor; the 
fine late Georgian and early Victorian public buildings, 
banks, and mansions; and even the commoner archi- 
tecture — rows of shingle-front houses with flat roofs, 
or with sloping roofs and dormers, and always high 
chimneys and chimney-pots; so many charming en- 
closed stoops, with curving steps directly to the side- 
walk, so many flowers in the windows, and such an air of 
dignity without pretension — oh, I do love it all, and I 
long to be here more. The Gardens are a dream of late 



66 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

spring luxuriance now. My house is close by, and often 
I spend a morning hour on a bench in some quiet nook, 
before which tall poppies, goblets of lambent fire, shiver 
in the gold sunlight. 

My friends the Craigs have outdone reason in their 
anxiety to make my stay pleasurable. 1 have a guest's 
ticket to the Waegwoltic Club, on the Northwest Arm, 
a mile from town, where the scenery is like a picture, 
almost too picturesque, with the narrow, tortuous sea- 
inlet, precipitously banked, draped with verdure, em- 
bossed with gray-rock, a stretch of some three miles, 
and beyond that the outer harbor and the sea. . . . 

LIV 

To Mrs. Mathews-Richardson 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

10 July, 1910 
. . . Edith and I have been here now some two 
weeks. We are beautifully situated, close to the water: 
the climate is inspiring, the very simple, quiet life most 
congenial tome. This is truly, "seen" aright, the coun- 
try of Michel: so you must know how close it comes to 
my heart. 

. . . You have the memory of lifelong devotion — al- 
most consecration — to your father's happiness: to me 
this was always very beautiful; and his delight in it, his 
reliance and dependence on you always profoundly im- 
pressed me. To have preserved so intimate a relation 
perfect, unembittered, to the end, is a lovely achieve- 
ment, and beyond the scope of most. . . . 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 67 

LV 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

22 August, 1 9 10 
. . . What you say about "Enchanted Ground" 

pleases me very very much. I agree with you that P 

is a Httle too good to be true. I think, though, that for a 
man who would think it necessary to tell his sweetheart 
that he had been once false to her, and the manner of it, 
there would be no escaping the necessity of practising 
the morality he preached — a slender thread of neces- 
sity, but a strong one; for integrity was, after all, the 
thing he deeply cherished. 

. . . Would Philip ultimately have broken, anyway? 
He was discontented always, and had the consciousness 
of wrongdoing. I do not know, I am sure, what he would 
have done. Yet a man of his type inevitably attracts 
those in need to him: Philip took into his life what 
would have been mere casual meetings in the case of a 
less responsive man: and if he had not adopted Barry 
and Queenie, he would certainly have adopted others 
equally evocative of honorable treatment. 

I do not agree with the "Record-Herald'* that the 
"lesson" is service: or rather, it is that, but secondarily. 
"Response to need" is primary in my thought, not de- 
sire to "serve" in any abstract sense. 

I am glad you liked Chapter VI when it finally came 
to you. It was not very easy to do — especially, 't was 
not easy to know how much to do. I was terribly anxious 
to do a scene de boudoir, but I knew that the publishers 
would not stand for it. And, on the whole, I rather like 



68 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

the little figure at the end about "Ashes and Darkness." 
For a "trick" (technically a trick) I think it's quite 
effective. ... 

LVI 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

The Birchdale, Halifax 

II September, 19 lo 

Dear Comrade: 

When, where, what did I write you last? I think 
a card from Arichat, telling of my sudden call to Min- 
nesota. I set out on the 21st; arrived at St. Paul the 
24th; worked like a dynamo for four days and nights 
with Mr. Fiske; and on Tuesday the 29th in Milwaukee 
attended the first rehearsal of "Mrs. Bumps tead-Leigh " 
— a comedy by Harry James Smith. Rehearsals through 
the week; and then a little interval, during which I was 
graciously permitted (and provided with the means) to 
take a respite. I came flying eastward, via the Lakes, 
the St. Lawrence, Montreal, and adorable, marvellous, 
stunning Quebec (I have lost my heart to the city), and 
caught up with sister Edith here. We are installed in a 
quiet, delightful hotel just on the edge of Halifax, close 
to the forest-rimmed harbor, and our plan is to stay until 
the 24th of the month. Then the ordeal recommences 
for me — next time in Chicago. Two or three weeks of 
rehearsals, and then the premiere, at the very thought 
of which I shudder. 

But it's all very good fun, and I love the game. Every 
one seems to be immensely enthusiastic about the play. 
Mrs. Fiske declares she never had a role that agreed 
with her better. It's sport to watch her in rehearsal: 



TO OLIVER M. WIARD 69 

she's so vivacious, so quick to invent business, so sure 
of herself. And both she and Mr. Fiske are dehghtful 
critics, friendly, deferential, invariably courteous. // we 
succeed in Chicago (which, by grace of God, we will) 
we'll bring "Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh" to New York for 
the winter season. In which case you will have to throw 
off your Berkshire seclusion and come to town, tricked 
out in all your furbelows, to clap Harry's performance. 

But this is all a dream. I refuse, as yet, to go ahead of 
the next step: which is two (2) weeks of, oh, such wel- 
come quiet ! Really, these mad dashes to the West — I 
don't like 'em, and I don't like the West; and I 'm sick of 
hotels with silver-mounted bathtubs and $8.50 table 
d'hotes, and I 'm sick of upper berths and cab fares and 
crowds and rain and — well, 'most everything 'cept 
keeping still. 

Where are you now, and what's the news? Please 

write. 

H. 

LVII 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

Halifax, N.S. 

18 September, 19 10 
Ch^ri: 

...About "Enchanted Ground" — the "Na- 
tion" gave the book one of the most cordial reviews I 
have ever read in that stem-tempered sheet, insisting 
particularly upon the virility, restraint, and "distinc- 
tion" of the style, the "splendid manliness" of the 
treatment throughout. "Restrained" the style surely is 
not, judged by Flaubert or de Maupassant: but with 
Loti or J. E. Allen or Hichens — or even Hawthorne — 



70 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

in mind, it seems to me pretty strongly controlled. 
Picking up the "Scarlet Letter" last March in Pough- 
keepsie I was fairly startled to see how many "ele- 
vated'* passages the author (whom we all revere) al- 
lowed himself. The test, it seems to me, is whether the 
style seems evoked by the subject, or seems rather an em- 
bellishment applied. I tried to avoid the latter, but I 
dare not say with uniform success. As a protest against 
realism, I am glad I did it. It took courage to give my- 
self the rein, for I feared just such criticisms as yours 
— yet I can't help suspecting that it is just in the rich 
yet thoughtful expression of an emotional situation 
that I find my special literary gift: certainly not in bare 
narration, which is entirely alien to me; nor in analysis, 
which I cannot do. For me, the "art" of fiction is in the 
rightly ordered presentment of the emotional life. The 
Chicago "Record-Herald" spoke of Mr. Smith's "fine 
reserve," as contrasted with the "hysterics" of Mere- 
dith in "Feverel." I do not take the compliment with- 
out much salt; but if you recall the "Mrs. Mount" 
scenes in the novel mentioned, you will see where a 
curb was very vigorously used by H. J. S. . . . 

LVIII 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

Chicago, \6 October, 19 lo 

I 'm so very very glad that both you and Carroll 
liked my new book. I should n't have thought any the 
less of you (I don't say of him) if you had n't; because I 
think it's very decidedly a man's book, not only in its 
point of view, but as well in the dash and concentration 



TO MISS EVELYN GILL KLAHR 71 

of the narrative — a sort of athletic spareness which 
impresses many feminine minds as crude. Do you know 
what I mean? Besides, a man is sure to like Katrinka: 
that's the fatahty of his sex. Just the other day an Eng- 
lish professor in Arizona University wrote me: "Your 
Katrinka is the great, gorgeous, unique creation of the 
book.'* For myself I love Georgia fully as well. I do 
not agree with you that she is a conventional woman. 
Her breeding, her pride, her isolation, and her experi- 
ences all seem to set her apart: to my mind an almost 
tragic creation. Not quite. I could do better with her had 
she been the centre of the story instead of a satellite, 
compelled by the plot to revolve in a certain orbit. Nev- 
ertheless, I do love her. And the Barry-Philip situation 
is, as you probably surmised, the one that above all 
appeals to me. I 'm glad you liked that. . . . 

LIX 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Chicago, 16 Octoher, 19 10 
. . . Frankly (coming now to business) I think it 
would be very good fun to take up the English work 
again; but I can't help doubting my own ability to be of 
genuine service to you. I think I've teached you all I 
know about technique and that sort of thing; quite hon- 
estly I think you understand the mechanics of story- 
writing fully as well as I. Furthermore, in story-work 
you are much more versatile than I, and can go a long 
way beyond me before you are done. What you lack is 
conviction, devotidti, unflinching dare or die ambition. 
I can't give you that. I don't even maintain that for you 



72 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

the game is necessarily worth the candle. // you think 
it is, why, you'll go ahead and put it through, spite of 
everything. If you don't know, then I am sure you had 
better drop it right now. This work is for people who 
can't help doing it. Others keep out. I hate dilettantism, 
dabbling, and all that, like poison, I don't mean that as a 
dabbler you might not do a lot of very clever things: but 
you needn't expect me to admire you for that; other 
people would give you all the admiration you needed. I 
can't find an apt union between writing and bridge 
parties and church "sociables." And unless I feel a deep, 
buoyant earnestness in another man's work, I can't (at 
this stage of the game) be bothered with criticizing it. 
Where I do feel that, I 'm ready to give a whole lot of 
what is best in me to the fellow worker. . . . 

LX 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

Grand Pacific Hotel, Chicago 

21 October, 1910 
... At present, I must say, the outlook for the 
play is most auspicious. (Rap on wood, please.) The 
improvement in rehearsals during this past week almost 
amazes me. Everybody is working like a dray-horse to 
do his best. And the situations and lines still remain so 
amusing to us, despite our deep-furrowed familiarity 
with them, that over and over again the rehearsal is held 
up while we all shake with mirth. Mrs. Fiske's sense of 
humor is delicious. She is a taskmistress if there ever 
was one; but even when most exacting, you are only too 
glad to serve her. Her genius is so indubitable, so com- 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 73 

pelling, that you sweat blood, and thank her for the 
privilege. 

But I am counting the days till my release, for it's 
true 1 'm terrifically tired. I hope to "skin out" Novem- 
ber 3d, making straight for Connecticut — fresh, open, 
windy country, clean ! (Good Lord, what a joy not to 
have soot-smudge all over one's nose !) And I expect to 
have a new saddle horse: and with that, and my half- 
completed novel, and a new play, I shall be snug and 
contented for the winter. Mrs. Fiske does n't reach New 
York till March, so that I ought to be free of outside re- 
sponsibilities until the last fortnight or so of February, 
when rehearsals with the specially selected company 
will begin. 

Well, it's a great game; and I do love it. I 'm just doing 
what I want to do, and I know I can do it well, though 
I 've a big lot to learn yet. But I 'm learning fast. These 
hard weeks here have been incalculably valuable to me. 
And the sympathy and confidence of the fine people 
I 've been associated with is immensely stimulating to 
new effort. . . . 

LXI 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn. 

8 December, 19 10 
. . . My trip into the Litchfields was immensely 
delightful. After much searching I discovered exactly 
the horse I had dreamed of — young, coal-black, full of 
ginger, speedy as a bird. I spent all my poor royalties to 
acquire her, spent them gladly; and I had three mem- 
orable days of homeward-faring across November hills. 



74 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

The weather, as you feared, was not auspicious; but I 
was too happy to mind; and the snow squalls and rain 
flurries lent, too, a variety to the landscape not without 
picturesque phases. Our Litchfields are much like the 
lower Berkshires, only wilder, with less sweep of upland 
field and pasture. They are preeminently my own heart's 
country; and I value having made their acquaintance 
at this maturer age. 

Since resuming routine life at home, "Zulu" has been 
my joy and crown, exorcizing my seven devils by means 
of her own. She may kill me yet; n'importe, ce serait une 
mort bienheureuse. 

My soul being deeply refreshed by the adventures of 
the fortnight subsequent to my quitting Chicago, I felt 
able to attack my new comedy with enthusiasm. The 
first ten days or so of work were murderously hard and 
thankless, as was sure to be the case; but when 1 finally 
got my idea — the idea which among all the assortment 
gathered of tentative ideas showed the power of germi- 
nation, of sprouting — I took heart of grace. And since 
then the work has fascinated me; I no longer force my- 
self into it; it holds me. ... 

LXII 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Berlin, Conn. 

3 March, 19 ii 
... All the family here Ve been sick, serially, 
and then "synchronously and at the same time.*' . . . 
Meanwhile, I wish you could have seen your pedagogue 
caper the culinary rounds ! (Oh, yes, Lotschka has been 
sick, too.) Brown bread, roasts, steamed puddings, cas- 



TO MRS. CARROLL L. MAXCY 75 

serole trifles. — The whole gay repertory! I love my art, 
but just what my art is I 'm at the present moment in 
doubt. I think it's chiefly what they call "general" — 
general housework, of course. 

As to "Bumpstead'* — it*s to go on at the end of 
March or first of April. My odd minutes go to the last 
polishing of the third act. It's a job that can last for- 
ever — or could, if the rehearsals were n't to begin in a 
fortnight. . . . 

LXIII 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

New York City 
3 April, 191 1 

Dear old Comrade: 

Here we are actually at the very climactic day 
of days! Dress rehearsal lasted from i p.m. till midnight 
yesterday, and to-day one sits about with a strange, 
listless, half-awake air, vaguely wondering when 8.30 
P.M. will arrive, and what story it will tell. I've been in 
town for something over a fortnight, and we have had 
daily rehearsals, of a rather exacting character; but I 
enjoy all that sort of thing, and though I 'm positively 
tired out, I feel that the work has been none of it in 
vain. At all events, it's been a splendid schooling for me 
in the playmaker's craft. 

I confess to expecting great things of " Mrs. Bump- 
stead-Leigh" — and if I'm to be disappointed, the dis- 
appointment will strike deep. The cast is superb, I could 
scarce wish an improvement beyond the radical in- 
adequacy of one single important role, that of Peter 
Swallow, Esq., of Indiana. Mr. D , who has the 



76 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

part, is a comedian of distinction, but his memory is 
most treacherous, and I do not much fancy his im- 
provising gift. For all that, the chances are that he will 
please. Mrs. Fiske's rendition has improved since Chi- 
cago; and she gives what I call a supremely brilliant 
performance: no actress in the world, so far as I know, 
could equal her in this role. . . . 

LXIV 

To HIS Sister 

New York City ■ 
4 April, 191 1 
Dear: 

It seems I Ve made a go of it! Are n't we all glad! 
Three or four papers are "thumbs down" — but the 
rest quite the reverse; and the "public" seems to be 
heartily with us. 

Thanks so much for your dear little letters. I '11 prob- 
ably get home Thursday. We're still rehearsing weak 
spots. Am keeping in good form. 

H. 

LXV 

To WIS Mother 

Perce, Gaspe County, Quebec 

24 June, 191 1 
. . . These last days have been full of novel and 
pleasant experiences. The trip down the St. Lawrence 
occupied Tuesday p.m. to Thursday noon — that is, 
Thursday noon we had rounded the Gaspe peninsula 
and passed up the twenty-mile narrow bay on which 
Gaspe itself is situated. At the little St. Lawrence vil- 



TO HIS MOTHER 77 

lages, which He under high rugged hills, there are never 
any wharves: the steamer anchors, and long-boats put 
out to her. The transfer of freight and passengers is often 
difficult, and always entertaining to observe; and the 
Provincial passengers were delightful. At one place, 
"Ste. Anne des Monts," six little girls in black got 
aboard, all on their way home from convent school, and 
their shy, surprised, nervous, giggling interest in every- 
thing, coupled with a most conscientious effort to be 
"well-bred," was captivating. Two of them wore silver 
medals "pour excellence." There was a lovely, white- 
haired priest on board who might have been the Abbe 
Constantin; there were two English Church clergymen; 
a Jersey "corporation-magnate" who wore his badge of 
honor on Coronation Day (as everybody was informed) 
"by special order of the King"; there were some very 
haughty English persons from Montreal, who ate im- 
mensely, and looked with amused pity at us common 
folk. My special acquaintance was a young French 
mechanic, on his way to Gaspe to take a position on 
the new railroad line. 

I stayed only a night at Gaspe, and the idea came to 
me there of taking the next stage of my journey by 
horse and carriage. I got a man to drive me twenty-five 
miles yesterday, along the coast and through back 
woods, across rivers in scow-ferries that were poled by 
two ferrymen; and at a pretty town named "Corner of 
the Beach," I took a relay and was brought over the 
Perce Mountains to Perce. This last lap of the journey, 
not more than eight miles or so, was the most startling 
drive of my life. The mountains are terribly steep, with 
precipice tops, and wild gorges, and the road — " Well, 



78 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

sir, it was a road!" And the way we tore along it! It 
made my hair stand on end ! At many places only wide 
enough for one vehicle, and shooting off on the down- 
ward side over a cliff of fifty or two hundred feet, with 
not even a fence between, and the horse at pell-mell 
speed, especially on every down grade — well, I had my 
fill for once of thrills. I 'm glad I did it, though, and I want 
to do it again before the summer is over. . . . 

LXVI 
To Karl G. Hill 

" Les Trots Fontaines " 
Perce, 3 August, 191 1 
. . . What I really did crave, above all, last week, 
was excitement — excitement of the town sort, tinged 
with disreputability. Here the best substitute available 
was a climb, all by myself, one afternoon, up the rock 
face of Mt. Ste. Anne. The inhabitants assured me the 
mountain could n't be climbed on that face; I was sure 
it could; and I had a superbly thrilling time doing it — 
up and down. At the base of the cliff, eight peasants, 
three men, four women, and a child awaited me with 
sprouting eyes. 

. . . There are many times when one must have some- 
thing big, engrossing — absolutely engrossing, primi- 
tive, physical ; and I fancy that if a man chose he could 
almost keep from naughtiness by choosing adventure 
of the dangerous sort. ... 



TO OLIVER M. WIARD 79 

LXVII 
To Griswold Tyng 

Perce, Gaspe County, P.Q, 

5 August, 191 1 
. . . The Perce Rock, with its great round hole, 

through which the sea washes, struck me at first as 
merely curious; but as I see it day by day, fronting the 
weather, resplendent in sunlight, veiled in fog, whitened 
by moon, I am coming to regard it with a kind of super- 
stitious awe. 

. . . Having been more or less unhappily impressed 
(as I fear you were) by my lack of thrift during my 
first days of liberty, you would be startled to see the 
extreme simplicity and economy and regularity of my 
present life. Simple living is certainly the natural, char- 
acteristic thing for me, and indeed necessary when I am 
hard at work; yet 1 should hate to surrender occasional 
periods of living at a higher tempo; I think most of us 
need both, . . . 

LXVIII 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

Perce, Quebec 

6 August, 191 1 
Ch^ri: 

My play is done, for the third and — I think — 
the last time. I 've spent five weeks of the best work of 
my life on it: and I am all but satisfied with the result. 
It has been great fun — this final reconstruction, with 
the materials — si connus — in hand, and the goal 
always in view. 
. . . We are most happy here in Perce. We have an 



8o LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

ancient and somewhat ruinous house for habitation, full 
of strange noises at night, and redolent of memories. A 
wild old garden, overgrown with sweet musk, now at 
prime bloom, and shaded by poplars, lies under our 
windows on one side, and behind the house rises a steep 
green hill, topped with fir. We nestle in a sort of corner 
of Mt. Ste. Anne, viewing, through our steep slopes, a 
wonderful reach of sea, and in this sea, close offshore, 
rises the strange mammoth of Siluric ages: the Roche 
Percee — three hundred feet high, half a mile long, 
sheer cliff all 'round, tinted like a palette, and circled 
and garlanded all day with millions of sea-birds. 

The landscape effects here are eternally diversified, 
and all stunning and wondrous. You should see the 
frowning cliff that dominates our valley on the farther 
side — Mt. Ste. Anne, eighteen hundred feet, sheerly 
upward for at least the topmost third of its height. We 
are a mile from town, and live most quietly, seeing but 
few people, and desirous of nothing beyond the day's 
blessings. It has been a superb place for working. 

How often I have wished you might be here! I cannot 
tell whether you would find anything sketchable in our 
region, but no impressionable soul could fail to be in- 
spired, in the best sense, by the display we have of 
Nature's wild strength and patience. . . . 

LXIX 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

Perce, Quebec 

9 August, 191 1 

... I like being lost in Perce. It's a complete 

little world in itself. The landscape is the most superb I 



TO MISS EVELYN GILL KLAHR 8i 

have ever seen. And we have so much of it at our door- 
step. Our house is old and dilapidated, but comfortable, 
and our servant is efficient. Edith is in much better 
health than last summer, and Perce delights her. We 
have had one guest, a dear friend, newly in mourning, 
from Arichat, who came a three days' journey by sea to 
be with sister. 

"Bumpstead" has done splendidly out West, and I 
feel years and years younger now that the wolf has with- 
drawn from my door. I ought to accomplish fine things 
in the next few years; if I don't, it will be because I 
have n't it in me to, for I certainly have the desire. . . . 

LXX 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Perce, Quebec 

13 August, 191 1 
... I just discovered yesterday what the purpose 
of my work in the world is. I had never phrased it 
before: never been able to, though knowing there was 
somehow, somewhere, a motive and a goal. It is Revela- 
tion. Not teaching, not influencing, not doing, but show- 
ing. I may fmd I cherish a fallacy, but at the moment 
of discovery I felt startled and satisfied. Also, I have 
a philosophy — a philosophy in a word : the nuggetery 
form — not nugatory, please. It is whistle. (Literally I 
can't whistle which lends point to the legend.) 

That reminds me, I wish you could hear me perform 
on my new clarinet. Our kitty is rendered quite ill by 
it — at first in the corner, but now we put her out of 
doors before beginning. . . . 



82 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

LXXI 

To THE Same 

Hotel Albert, New York 

7 October, 191 1 
. . . Only a brief hour ago I put — as I think — 
the very last final finishing touches to "The Countess 
and Patrick." I 've been here for a week, working hard 
on the incorporation of a new idea; and, oh, I do think 
I 've been successful, and the comedy just looks to me 
(at this moment — which of course won't endure long) 
the sweetest, truest, most humorous thing I've ever 
done. I 'm simply in love with it. 

To-morrow I turn my face homeward, after an absence 
of four months less four days. Edith is there, and 
mother, and autumn, and (in a few days more) my 
mare, beloved Zulu, returning from boarding-school 
where she has been learning the single-foot and waltz, 
and, for all I know, several modern languages, at the 
tuition fee of $4.50 a week. Mais, si je serai content 
de la revoir, cette fille qui revient toute decoree — 
tendue de medailles, et de rubans. La belle aventure, 
la, la! 

Of course your letter should have been answered 
earlier: but travel, pleasure, work, and woe have been 
allowed to prevent. "Woe!" you ask, stunned for the 
moment. Alas ! — Perhaps Edith told you of my painful 
accident? A badly sprained knee, just before we left — 
I mean, were to leave — Perce. August 26th was the 
date; and I'm still hobbling pathetically about on two 
sticks. 1 've been very brave and cheerful about it, but 
inside (c'est entre nous, ma chere, absolument entre 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 83 

nous) Tve suffered ! Besides, it costs so much, taking 
taxicabs instead of street-cars! *'Home is best.". . . . 

LXXII 
To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn. 

16 November, 191 1 
. . . Oliver Wiard, my old chum, was down last 
night from New Britain; and to-morrow afternoon we 
are planning a fifteen-mile jaunt into the country; I on 
Zulu, he part-way by train and part-way afoot, to a 
little old secluded town called Durham where we will 
spend the night at a farmhouse. I '11 take, in a saddle- 
bag, my newest book, Rodin's "L'Art," and we will 
read it aloud during the evening. I have read it once 
already and am fascinated. What else have I read? The 
first volume of "The Newcomes*' (for the first time). 
I find Thackeray just now entirely to my taste; I won- 
der why — perhaps his light, keen, yet so humane com- 
edy touch. Long-winded and desultory — yes; but 
somehow I don't mind that in a certain type of novel. 
Or rather, I don't dislike it when it's so well done. I 
loathed the chattiness and "sogginess" of "Queed," for 
instance, though quite fancying some passages of the 
book. Two or three books on lumber camps (including 
one by the prolific E. S. White), a volume on Wyoming 
(the scene of Act I of my Tim Murphy play) ; and two 
more plays of Moliere. "Tartuffe" is henceforth my 
ideal Gallic comedy; I had no idea it was so racy, so 
lively, so amusing. I do hope to do a little more reading 
this winter than last. . . . 
. . . The Brieux plays you speak of I have not read. 



84 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

but read much of: and I should like to know them. It 
seems to me that most of the more serious French drama 
of the day is very stagey. I felt this most vividly in wit- 
nessing, last week, Madame Simone's performance, at 
Daly's, of Bernstein's "La Rafale" — the Whirlwind. 
The play was absorbing with certain moments of thrill- 
ing force; but a little thought (afterwards) undermined 
its whole structure. Madame herself was interesting, re- 
fined, and artful in good and doubtful senses of the word. 

... I wonder what kind of comedy Thackeray could 
have done. The points that disturb you in his manner 
would be largely eliminated. But I question whether he 
could write impersonally enough for the stage. Don't 
you think you incline to overestimate the amount of 
*' stage manager" talk he allows himself? It seems to 
me there is very little comment on the mechanics of 
his stories, outside the too famous preface to "Vanity 
Fair." He talks, to be sure, and talks; but his attitude 
toward his characters is that they are very real human 
beings, affording texts for satirical or sentimental lu- 
cubrations. I must say I love his satire. Whom have we 
so deft, so facile, so kindly, in this line? In sentiment he 
does certainly often over-indulge. Esmond drools in- 
terminably, I remember, about the sad extinguishing of 
the Altar Fires of Love! And "The Newcomes" goes 
it and goes it again on the innocent wild joys of young 
manhood : I sicken here and there both of Clive and his 
dear old father the Colonel. But as a whole (having 
read, that is to say, one volume) I like the book. . . . 

We had one day of true Indian summer! How I hope 
winter is not now about to shut down on us; I want 
more purple hazes and soft, mellow afternoons such as 
the late autumn two years since was so prolific in. 



TO THE SAME 85 

I really must go to bed now, though I Ve not even 
mentioned my adorable new dog Patrick! That will 
occupy (probably) much of my next letter. . . . 

LXXIII 

To THE Same 

Berlin, Conn. 

6 March, 1912 
. . . Mr. Belasco — did I tell you? — gave me my 
contract on the basis of my idea, ere I had written a 
word on paper. This unusual procedure put me on my 
mettle to show him creditable results and my draught 
of the first act was the fruit of much sweat, blood, and 
tears. " Immense, young man — simply immense!" was 
his verdict; reward, indeed, to my doubtful, timid heart. 

It's odd how dependent I seem to be on kind words! 
Bereft of the confidence of at least a few discerning per- 
sons, I think my talents would utterly rust away in a 
napkin. Certainly I should never do anything extraor- 
dinary; never excel myself. 

I fmd that I cannot forgive H for the trivial, 

supercilious comments he passed on " Mrs. Bumpstead- 
Leigh." It was lack of tact, no doubt, on his part; yet 
fundamentally, who likes me must like my work, and if 
not my work as a whole, yet assuredly his me in it, so 
far as it appears there, and it is the part of friendship 
to emphasize what is congenial and worthy to be liked. 
To slap a friend's child in the face and expect the friend 
to be happy and grateful about it is what H vir- 
tually adopts as procedure. 

... By the way, I draw a distinction — do you? — 
between /^rc^ and low comedy. Ma and Swallow belong, 



86 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

if I am right, to the second. Query: are the yokels in 
"Midsummer Night's Dream" or in a Hardy novel 
farce? My answer is, no, because they are thoroughly 
true to character, a logical type, each. Farce exists for 
situation, ludicrous incident. True comedy is preoccu- 
pied with the crossplays of character. Ma is farce when 
the player is encouraged to throw type-truth to the 
winds and (in a crisis) to let her skirts creep ridiculously 
up to her knees. Swallow is farce when his familiar, hail- 
fellow manner becomes slap-stick buffoonery; every- 
thing that I value in the part is then lost. Do you see 
that I have an idea, though I have n't thought it out 
adequately? ... 

LXXIV 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

At Home, ij March, igi2 

... As a matter of fact, I have n't the least idea 

in the world what the chances are at present for a rural 

play; but I think they are always good and always hard 

to get. 

Don't be afraid to characterize your parts: I mean to 
give character exaggerations of the Dickensy, "typey" 
type! It belongs to the genre. Wish you could see " Re- 
becca" or "Wiggs" before writing. Don't try for real- 
ism as you and I understand it — it won't make for the 
success of the play. Homely touches will: but don't be 
afraid of the long arm of coincidence and all that. And 
give plenty of bright lines to your ingenue heroine. And 
plenty of laughter and plenty of pathos. In plot itself 
novelty as such is no object whatever. 

Any advice or other help I can give, please give me 
the chance. . . . 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 87 

LXXV 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn, 

18 April, 1912 
... I begin to think that a comedy situation in- 
variably offers you drama if you want it. That *s the ques- 
tion. To my mind (and I suspect most playwrights will 
agree with me) the comedy situation is the harder to get 
and the harder to write out — requires the more in- 
tense intellectual effort.To turn it into drama, you stop 
the dance music, let the tempo alter, and merely allow 
your imagination to burrow emotionally into the sub- 
stance. Comedy has its deliberate parti pris, and exacts 
an almost uncanny detachment from the undercurrents 
of life, though if the comic writer does not somehow feel 
and allow for those currents his comedy misses fire — 
seems heartless and vain. 

How do you like to hear me philosophize? It's all my 
news at present, for nothing has happened to me this 
long while outside the incidents of my work, nor will, if 
I have my way, until early June, when I plan to set out 
for the East and my little landhold in Arichat. The deed 
of the property is now recorded, and the alterations and 
repairs are to commence next week. A servant girl has 
been corralled. I f was a question of wages, ultimately. 
Would we pay six dollars per month? Five is the custom 
of the country; but for six she would refrain from ac- 
cepting another place till June. We accepted with almost 
suspicious alacrity. Another year she may demand six 
per week instead of six per month. . . . 



88 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 1 

LXXVI 

To Oliver M. Wiard 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

6 July, 1 9 1 2 
. . . Our first weeks here were prodigiously busy 
for Miss Steele and myself, for it turned out important 
to get two acts of our farce to New York before the 
close of this present week. We sent off the script Tues- 
day night: and since then have enjoyed a self-appointed 
vacation. T was fun, though; and from parallel experi- 
ences of your own (more numerous than mine) you will 
know how glad we felt when the thing was done on the 
day fixed. Our provision title is " Mathilda Comes Back 
— A Character Farce": the style is very racy and col- 
loquial, the story a little improbable, the personages 
very emphatically delineated: yet it comes near to be- 
ing what I wanted to do; I like it very much: a hearty, 
healthy, buoyant, infectious thing that ought to blow 
through the theatre like a gust of salt sea wind and tonic 
everybody. 

. . . When I write next I will tell you more of our 
"terre"; suffice it to say here, it is a lovely spot. The big 
living-room, panelled green, with six windows, is the 
most livable place you can imagine. The alterations 
worked out better than we had any right to expect. The 
little cabin on the hill is adorable and now that the dai- 
sies are nodding and beckoning all about it, above and 
below, it is an ecstasy just to lie there a-swing in the 
hammock. I have a lovely little boat, too, commodious, 
light, easy to manoeuvre: and I spend a good deal of my 
free time over near Kavanaugh's Head, beloved by 
both of us! In the big marsh over there — you remem- 



TO MISS EVELYN GILL KLAHR 89 

ber ? — a million blue iris are just now making a miracu- 
lous carpet, bleu de Beauvais on shining green. . . . 

LXXVII 
To Mrs. Lucy James 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

3 September, 191 2 
The summer has been one of light and shadow — 
perhaps more of the latter, for we have met with a terri- 
ble sorrow in the loss of the youngest and dearest mem- 
ber of our family circle, my sister Faith. 

LXXVII I 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

16 August, 1 9 12 
. . . Tm beginning to get on my feet again — so 
to speak — after some cruelly hard weeks. To be so far 
from home and to be able to do nothing was almost in- 
tolerable. And just the downright, sheer load of grief 
crushed me as I had no conception it would — being 
prepared for the blow ere it fell. I did n't feel resentful 
about the death of my little sister: I wonder why. Is it 
because I 've outgrown anything so futile? Or perhaps 
because I felt somehow in the casting-up accounts for a 
life lived as beautifully and truly as that, the balance 
was on the credit side very positively; — each day had 
been its own reward, so to speak. But I did feel just 
blindly stricken and dumbed by grief — not for her, 
but for myself, for us, for our home, from which that 
brightness has irrevocably gone out. 



90 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

When the heart says, "She has not left us; we hold 
her still," the heart within the heart answers, " Yes, but 
how unsubstantially and coldly compared with flesh 
and blood." Remembered laughter is sad when you 
know you will never hear it again save in memory. . . . 

LXXIX 

7b Miss Jean Bascom 

New York City 

1 8 October, 1912 
ChIre Amie: 

Won*t you be surprised when you hear my news? 
I can still hardly believe it 's true. I suppose it cuts me 
out of a visit at Hedge Lawn next month — but under 
the circumstances that must not be too painfully 
weighed, for — " Blackbirds " is to be produced at once. 

... By a series of bewildering permutations, it comes 
about that Henry Miller wants to take up the play and 
that Belasco has consented to release it. 

. . . Miller always does things artistically and care- 
fully; I am incredibly lucky (it seems to me now) to be 
"in" with so fine a man. And he wants to contract with 
me at once for a second play. . . . 

LXXX 

To the Same 

Berlin, Conn. 

23 December, 19 12 
Dear Jean: 

Home again for a little rest before the last and 
ultimate plunge — New York! I left Washington Fri- 
day. The company plays Buffalo this week, and I shall 



TO THE SAME 91 

return to them at Atlantic City where we "do time" 
until our metropolitan opening, January sixth. The 
Lyceum not being available earlier, we had to wait. 
Sorry to miss New Year's week in town — but no mat- 
ter, weVe half the season left! And I hope, oh, I do 
hope we'll land a big success. Why should n't we! Cer- 
tainly our preliminary weeks have been most promising. 
Washington quite lost its head over us. And no wonder. 
The performance is a captivating one: such extraordi- 
narily good team play, such a superb cast ! To say noth- 
ing of Mister Author's contribution — of which, how- 
ever, something may be said. The play has one very 
weak joint, not discovered till performance: nor can this 
joint be strengthened — only, in so far as possible, dis- 
guised. If it does not turn our public against us (and I 
am almost sure it will not — cannot), then we have a 
sure thing! . . . 

LXXXI 

To THE Same 

New York City 

8 January, 1 9 1 3 
My dear Jean: 

The critics pounced on " Blackbirds" in the most 
wantonly ferocious, bloodthirsty manner, tearing it into 
shreds and laughing as the feathers flew — and this in 
spite of a superbly enthusiastic first night. If critics can 
kill, we are dead: but we hope to disprove them and are 
renewing the fight, believing that in time we can win 
a public. Yesterday I was sick with chagrin: but to-day 
I am almost myself again. Of course, I must stick by 
the show for the present. The public love it, and we still 



92 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

expect to get a public, in spite of the birds of Calamity. 
Anyhow we'll die fighting. 

Thanks so much for your invitation. If life were not 
so strenuous, I 'd accept it. 

Harry 

LXXXH 

7*0 HIS Sister 

Berlin, Conn. 

13 January, 191 3 
. . . Tm getting a splendid rest here at home and 
feeling very much like myself again. In fact I am de- 
lighted to see how quickly self-confidence is renewing 
itself and how energetically something is urging me to 
jump into the game again. No doubt, more than any- 
thing else, the new inspiration comes from my so much 
clarified knowledge of my peculiar gifts. I seem to feel 
that hereafter nothing shall tempt me away from my 
true vocation, that of presenting the life of our day from 
the angle of Comedy. It seems to me a blessed work, 
and it has been proved to me that it is my work. 

Every comedy scene — practically every comedy 
line — in the new play has proved altogether successful 
and has proved so from the first production, requiring 
almost no revision or reduction. Also with the comedy 
(and pathetic) love-scenes. I think every one (excepting 
certain critics) Monday night, felt that the first act was 
the most remarkable thing in the whole range of native 
comedy. All the trouble came when I stepped out of my 
role. 

. . . How quickly your average audience will tell you 
whether you are hitting the bull's-eye or not! And if you 



TO THE SAME 93 

don't hit it, that 's your fault, not theirs. The Grandma 
scene failed because it was a bad scene. I see it so 
plainly now, and all the whys and wherefores; and I 
wonder why none of us saw it earlier! Even Mr. Belasco, 
who commented on it that it ought to go big! 

. . . Miller has stood by me splendidly and wants an- 
other play right away. Laura H. C. has been a perfect 
brick. In fact everybody has been wonderful. I would 
be ashamed to lose heart now. . . . 

LXXXIII 
To THE Same 

At Home 

1 9 January, 1 9 1 3 
My Dear: 

Has the high tragical news reached you? " Black- 
birds" chirp their last to-morrow! Here endeth the Nth 
lesson! What has it taught? — aside from the element 
of luck and other uncontrollables. I think this: the end 
of Act 1 1 was a fatal let-down of pitch. Having broached 
a brilliant, dazzling comedy, we settle to what the pub- 
lic thought a preachment. And what follows — Act 1 1 1 
goes for nothing because they don't like the situation. 
Drastic doctrine — but I begin to see that it is the 
thing that emerges from all these contradictory and 
blind and perverse criticisms — and I feel its justice. I 
go to town to-morrow to attend obsequies. With a new 
comedy coming well into mind, too. I am anxious to be 
at work on it ! 

H. 



94 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

LXXXIV 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn. 

10 February, 191 3 

. . . Belasco said to me Saturday he considered 

the first act the finest comedy act ever seen in New 

York. "The play," said he, "did your reputation fully 

as much good as a success, for every one knows what to 

expect of you next time — something as good as * The 

School for Scandal.'". . . 

LXXXV 

To HIS Sister 

Berlin, Conn. 

25 February, 191 3 

Dear: 

We were all worrying a good deal about Alice 
last night. Mother stayed downstairs — but was not 
needed. I think the situation is unchanged this morning. 
I am not deeply troubled about things myself: the only 
thing I seem to feel much is a wish that the end may 
come quietly and soon, for the sake of the two we most 
wish relief for. Relief: release. 

I hope you will be able to keep yourself from brood- 
ing and from fear — just now peculiarly vain proceed- 
ings. We can't do anything but watch — I can't, even 
here at home. Don't wish you were home: nothing 
would be gained by it, and much lost. Life is measured 
out to us in certain ways. For myself, I will not go 
through another Black Valley, like last summer. Per- 
haps it had to be done once: but once was enough. For 
one thing my feet are more surely grounded on experi- 



TO MRS. MATHEWS-RICHARDSON 95 

ence. And life and activity have primary claims. Con- 
tinued depression is death feeding on us prematurely. 
It relieves me to think that all this is not a solitary and 
unique ordeal, separating us from main currents of 
life, and crushing us with unexampled burdens: it and 
we are all a fleck in the universal tide — and the re- 
sponsibility is not ours — it is the Universe's. . . . 

LXXXVI 

To Mrs. Mathews-Richardson 

Berlin, Conn. 

Sunday, 2 March, 19 13 
My dear Friend Bessie: 

I know you will be grieved to learn of Alice's 
death, which occurred this morning, and yet you will be 
happy with us, for her, and with her — that the end 
of her long term of suffering has been reached. Her ill- 
ness developed very serious complications about three 
weeks ago, and for seven or eight days we have known 
that the end was very near, indeed. She was in great 
pain until Thursday night, when, about one a.m., she 
awoke from a brief nap and exclaimed in a little joy- 
ous whisper "The pain is all gone and I want to see 
everybody!" We came down to her bedside — mother 
and Laura, Dwight and myself — and for an hour and a 
half we were with her. She did not seem like a mortal 
being. All signs of her sickness were gone from her radi- 
ant, smiling countenance; the night wind blew through 
the room through open windows, and while the nurse 
kept bits of ice between her lips, she talked with us 
all, gently, serenely, almost gayly, with ever so many 



96 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

little funny observations scattered through — a death- 
bed surely such as was never seen before, utterly with- 
out ceremonious solemnity, yet heartbreakingly sweet 
— a natural thing in the truest sense, where death was 
waited for with a welcome. 

If ever there was a triumphant close to an aspiring 
life, surely this was one. " I am so glad to go," she said. 
"So glad: and none of you must feel anything but glad- 
ness!" She had messages and greetings for everybody, 
really! And after a while sleep came again. And yes- 
terday there was another waking, almost as wonderful 
(the fifth day without nourishment of any kind), and 
she looked quietly, happily out of the window over the 
brown, windy hill, and again listened to music. Then she 
slept again, and this morning left us, in sleep. . . . 

LXXXVII 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn. 

30 March, 191 3 
. . . What could be said in five lines, for instance, 
about the International Exhibition? The questions you 
ask — " What does it mean? — What will it lead to ? — 
Surely so and so and so and so are essential to a work of 
art?" — can be extended indefinitely and an answer 
attempted, and yet one is only skirting the discussion. 

... At best I could only look at it as a fantastic ex- 
periment, a grasp at the ungraspable: not in any degree 
momentous — but piquant: with all its futility infi- 
nitely preferable to the average pretty gallery picture of 
cows in a brook or Landseer dogs. Of course, in so far as 
my own work exemplifies a tendence in art, it is the op- 



TO THE SAME 97 

posite of all this: i.e., positively back toward the known 
and familiar. I do not care for novelty and sensation, 
but for strength, construction, logic. My originality is 
the kind that infuses trite materials with a new life. I 
did not start that way: it took me years to learn myself, 
to get oriented. . . . 

LXXXVIII 

To THE Same 

Berlin, Conn. 

27 April, 191 3 
. . . While in town I saw " Divor^ons," which is 
amusing, but only moderately well acted in this revival 
(by Grace George), and an absurd play called "The 
Master Mind,'* to which I was conveyed willy-nilly by a 
friend of the producer's. Aside from that, my time was 
spent in the society of mes intimes — a tea, a studio 
lunch, a long evening drive in a hansom cab (a delicious 
form of dissipation) through Park byways, and a dinner 
at the Claremont. It all seems a long way off now, my 
days at home have been so en regie and invariedly busy. 
The flower garden consumes all my spare time, aside 
from what goes to Zulu and to the piano. You have never 
seen me dig and scratch and plant and fertilize. A win- 
some sight ! And from the joy of me you would think me 
purely rustic in my inclinations. Well, it is fun. And I 
love to see things grow! 

For reading I have been delving into de Maupassant 
(your present having revived my interest in him), com- 
pleting my perusal of Moliere (I've finished him now, 
except for the pastorals and masques), reading Rostand's 
"Les Romanesques" and "La Princesse Louitaine" 



98 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

aloud with my friend Oliver Wiard; and (dipping into 
the thing casually) have become engrossed with the 
Galsworthy serial in "Scribner's." It is quite wonderful, 
I think, so far. . . . 

LXXXIX 

To THE Same 

Arichai, Cape Breton 

8 August, 191 3 
My dear Jean: 

This morning at 1 1.50 o'clock I wrote "Curtain" 
to the first draught of my Act II, heaved a mighty sigh, 
and resolved that the remainder of the day should be 
dedicated to pleasure. Therefore I napped for an hour in 
my inviting hammock, that swings up here in the Look- 
out above my house, sheltered from the sun and too 
strong breezes, but airy, and with a truly wonderful 
view, as one idly swings, over the green fields that drop 
away below to the harbor — the blue, glittering sheet of 
the harbor, and beyond, brown-green hills, the Cape 
and the big Bay. Thus spent I the hour till dinner, and 
directly after that pleasant meal (assisted at by sis- 
ter, self, dog Patrick, and our two little black kittens, 
Nanda and Branda) I set out afoot for my beach, two 
miles away, by an old road across the barrens, at Bar- 
rassois. You will judge, rightly, that I can walk much 
J better than a year ago. I had a little dip in the ocean, 
' particularly enjoyable because the southeast wind that 
is blowing was bringing in a pretty surf; I loafed awhile 
on the sand while Pat explored amongst the seaweed 
for unnameable but quite edible odds and ends of morti- 
fication; then we capered home together, and now, at 



TO THE SAME 99 

a little after four, Tm in my Lookout again, all the 
weather doors closed but one (for the wind is freshen- 
ing), thinking that a rambling, not too exacting, letter 
to you is a most enjoyable occupation. 

. . . I've almost come to a standstill with " Monte 
Cristo." Volume III is awful, and of a childishness! Qa. 
ne me va pas, mon Dieu. Besides, I 've been at other 
more worth while and enjoyable reading. Oscar Wilde's 
comedies — do you know them? — so brilliant, worldly, 
fruitless, yet stimulating. Henry James's "Awkward 
Age" — to me an irritating but fascinating volume; 
the "Roman du Theatre" you have, and the Moliere, 
which sister and I are keeping at with solid satisfaction 
and frequent hilarity. What divine laughter! So sane 
and sanifying. . . . 

XC 

To THE Same 

Berlin, Conn. 

7 December, 191 3 
My Dear: 

Just back from New York where I have been at- 
tending to contracts and stuffing myself on polar litera- 
ture, to repletion, and the upshot of it all is that I 've 
contracted to deliver the completed play by the ist of 
February. " Only think, Hedda." 

Mr. Miller will begin rehearsals directly thereafter, 
we conjecture, and will produce in March. 

Wheeee-00! 

Everything else is oflF . No Northampton carnival — 
no nothing: I'm to be buried, dead, unheard of, oblit- 
erated for seven weeks, while like a sturdy, quiet mole 
I burrow. 



100 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

Good-bye! — Think not to see me more! 

Of course, I '11 thank you for the lovely and so appro- 
priate Christmas present, when it comes, — and drop 
you lines now and then as to my burrowing. 

This is, of course, a terrifically big chance for me. 

In this business all — All — is gamble. Hence I count 
on nothing — but jump at the chance and am happy. 

Fortunately my health is quite restored — save that I 
tire quicker than I like. But regular life, much sleep, and 
prosperity will all benefit me. . . . 

XCI 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Berlin, Conn. 

20 March, 19 14 
. . . Those broken arches of yours worry me. I 
began to feel queer little pains almost instantly in my 
Right Foot, but just before 1 went to a surgeon about it 
the trouble disappeared. Don't let them amputate, my 
dear, whatever they do! I can't bear to think of all the 
pairs of nice shoes you'd have left, useless, on your 
hands, — though now that I write the phrase "on your 
hands" I see that a use is suggested by it! Perhaps you 
could — yet, and the picture is attractive — learn to 
walk on them! . . . 

XCII 

To THE Same 

At Home 

20 April, 1 914 
. . . Saturday I went to Boston to see my com- 
edy. It looked so odd to me, after two years — so faulty 
and yet so adorably mirthful. Mrs. Fiske is wonderful as 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM loi 

ever — more so I almost think! And Malcolm Duncan 
makes the best Peter Swallow yet. 

. . . Mrs. Fiske wants me to write her a play for 
year after next with my Zoe Hopham (you remember 
that queer artist from Paris in "Effie's Soul," with her 
famous picture "Intoxication from Kissing") as the 
star part! — a gay, breezy satire, near burlesque. I'm 
mad about it ! Are n't you? ... 

XCIII 
To Miss Jean Bascom 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

6 August, 1 914 
. . . Karl has doubtless told you of Mrs. Fiske's 
three weeks' sojourn in Arichat. She wrote me from 
Yarmouth that she had never had a happier outing in 
her life. I think, above all, she took a fancy to the peo- 
ple — especially the little people — of the town. The 
good manners that obtain here she found very remarka- 
ble, insisting that she had to reform her own so as not to 
be found boorish. Arichat fairly adopted her. She talked 
to every one she met, and always was followed about by 
a loyal contingent of boys and girls — the former chiefly 
barefooted and belonging to the more disreputable fam- 
ilies. We saw rather little of her and Miss Stevens, 
for I felt that they were happier left to themselves to 
prowl and discover. But they made several brief visits at 
my house, and 1 took them out a number of times for little 
boating trips. Mrs. Fiske's inextinguishable enthusiasm 
was the trait in her that most struck me. It is adorable 
in a woman of her maturity and sophistication. An 
unreasoning energy of living, an eagerness that fairly 
sweeps one along with it. . . . 



102 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

XCIV 
To THE Same 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

13 September, 19 14 
... As long as I have things to look forward to I 
can quite well bear delays. Since I received that famous 
installment of money, I have had none of those hatefully 
depressed days that blighted the month of July for me. 
I cannot yet look back on it without a wave of goose- 
flesh. Whereas August has been purely delightful! And 
such gorgeous, incomparable weather ! Jove has showered 
aerial gold over us. Just to live, some days, is to be 
drunk. And this despite the sobering newspapers, which 
I devour now, paragraph by paragraph, daily. I see the 
"Republican,** the "Evening Post,'* the "Evening 
World," and a Provincial paper from Halifax — and 
even so I do not get my fill. What wonderful news! 
What war of worlds ! I think that in countless big ways 
the world will be the better for it. Horrible as it all is — ■ 
yet in its cruel way so correcting. Asperge me sanguine, 
Domine, ut fortior sim! I do not think I should go to 
the front in a big conflict unless I had to, for I am not 
robust enough to do man's work there: but how I 
should love to be in the service — somewhere! — per- 
haps a dispatching office. It must be grand. . . . 

xcv 

To THE Same 

At Home 

21 October, 19 14 

... On Friday I saw the "Phantom Rival." All 

that the paper said about Miss Crewes is true, and more 



TO THE SAME 103 

could be said, all laudatory. It is a charming, brilliant, 
unusual play — hardly a play! — with a note of wist- 
fulness that tingles at one's heartstrings. It reminds one 
forcefully of the real part dreams play in a life — espe- 
cially a woman's life — and reminds one, too, of the sad- 
ness (so to speak) of their irrealizability. Life is so pro- 
saic in comparison with dream-life: yet the prosaic has to 
be accepted and lived with, while the dreams — if saved 
at all — are only for momentary solace. Rather a tenu- 
ous idea for dramatic treatment, but Crewes "got it 
over" splendidly: and every one loved and — I think — 
understood the little wife she embodied. 

... To go back to the *'Spy" — the "technical per- 
fection" you mention seemed to me in too high a degree 
a matter of carpentry : — the perfection of " Mrs. Dane's 
Defence," for instance, which at the present moment 
leaves audiences cold instead of hot. The critical term 
for this type of play (as doubtless you know) is " paste- 
board drama" — and a highly sophisticated audience, 
trained to take cues, sees the preparation of the grande 
scene and never gives itself obliviously to it. Mrs. Carter 
only this winter aroused laughter in the big scenes of 
"Zaza" and "Tanqueray," where our audiences used to 
be in hysterics of excitement. Kistermaecker wrote in an 
outworn genre, and perfect as the play is, the instant I 
saw it on the stage I felt its cardboardyness. And I know 
you would have felt the same thing. The Pinero style is 
passe — for better or worse. . . . 

. . . And another night I went to "L'Epervior": oh, 
so theatrical, so clap-trappy! The reading of it had 
not at all convinced me of its futility. But like "La 
Flambee," and so many other French "dramas," the 



104 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

manner is utterly demode for our stage. People watch 
the "big" scenes with mere good-natured tolerance, ap- 
preciating the virtuosity of this or that actor — noth- 
ing more. In this case the honors went emphatically to 
Dorziat, the actress who originated the woman's role 
in Paris and who was imported by Faversham to play 
opposite him here. She is skinny and old, but a per- 
fectly finished artiste, without, however, I should say, 
"magnetism." 

. . , What an obsession of sex the French stage suffers 
from. With all its art and cleverness, I am glad to be 
spared writing for it. Do they think of anything else? 
It ends by getting on one's nerves. . . . 

XCVI 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

14 November, 19 14 

. . . New York is full of interesting plays: I do 
not remember a season when there have been so many 
at one time. Mrs. Campbell is rare and lovely, too, in 
"Pygmalion"; and personally I liked the play, but the 
public don't seem to think so well of it as of " Fanny's 
First Play." I think perhaps it's a little blinder, to 
them; and by no means so smarty. Marie Tempest is 
delicious and incomparably sparkling in a rather soggy 
comedy, by Henry Arthur Jones, of English provincial 
social jealousies, "Mary Goes First." The big produc- 
tion of " David Copperfield," which I did n't see, has 
proved a failure; but great things, I hear, are expected 
of the "Garden of Paradise" which must be opening 
just about now. When I see it, I '11 tell you about our 
Em'ly Stevens! I hope she will land a hit, don't you! 



TO MRS. LUCY JAMES 105 

There are several very bright American farces on, es- 
pecially, "It Pays to Advertise"; and a whole slew of 
melodramas, none of which has as yet had the benefit of 
my presence. . . . 

XCVII 
To Mrs. Lucy James 

Berlin, Conn. 

3 December, 19 14 
My very dear Lady of Perc6: 

You would certainly be surprised to know how 
very frequently I think of you and enviously picture 
you in your eyrie, perched above the sea, blown by all 
the winds of heaven, stared at by the wonderful rock and 
the cliffs and the mountain. I suppose in certain moods 
and seasons these cannot be accounted always as of 
friendly disposition: but at least they are grand, primi- 
tive foes, challenging one to wrestle with them! How I 
should love to behold one of your real winter storms, 
with assaults of snow and surge! It must be thrilling 
beyond words! Had I been a little less impecunious last 
summer, you would have seen me pop in on you one fme 
afternoon. I was quite resolved upon revisiting Perce, if 
but for a pair of days. But then of a sudden broke the 
war. All my prospects for the theatrical year to come 
were incontinently smashe. I had a big play ready for 
production, with the dangers of Arctic exploration its 
main theme. Who now cares to have his sympathies 
enlisted by the hardy Norseman? Just now all that 
seems infinitely far away and "academic" and unreal. 
My producers "called off" the undertaking — and I 
think quite wisely. I have sold another play (started 



io6 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

during the summer) since then; but we shall not offer it 
on Broadway this season. There are a few — a very few 
— successes on the boards: but the chances are slim for 
a new play, even when the critics praise it unstintedly, 
for the public is staying away from the theatre. Conse- 
quently most of us authors are experiencing a **lean" 
year, indeed — praying as devoutly for the cessation of 
war as ever Belgian could! . . . 

I suppose you, like us here, are talking, reading, think- 
ing nothing but the war; and of course you are all as 
bitterly anti-German as we are. "Ces monstres, ces 
traitres, ces diables!" as a French friend of mine gently 
puts it! . . . 

XCVIII 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Berlin, Conn. 

22 December, 1914 
. . . What a way you have of keeping us all sus- 
pended and on the jump, one leg in the air, with anxiety! 
The instant we begin to lower the leg and say, "now 
surely the worst is over, now we can resume our normal 
posture, now we can repose from this unnatural exer- 
tion,'' voila — news arrives of another relapse, a new 
complication. Up goes the leg again! This may be sport 
for you (as the fabulous frogs exclaimed to the fabulous 
boy); but it is killing us. Understand, dear Evelyn, that 
I know what sport you are having, and that I realize 't is a 
temptation to keep at it: but please remember that for 
our part we do long for a few days of uninterrupted 
good news! . . . 



TO MISS EVELYN GILL KLAHR 107 

XCIX 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn. 

30 December, 19 14 
... It is most enjoyable for me to have Oliver's 
evening companionship. Our occupations are princi- 
pally two: piquet, which we have been learning out of 
Hoyle; and Virgil. We are spending about an hour a day 
renewing our acquaintance with the ^neid, using Latin 
texts and a literal translation. I have longed for years 
to know, with more mature powers of enjoyment, the 
Virgilian line, and this occasion is bringing me much 
memorable pleasure. The sonority, the dignity, the 
thoughtfulness of the verse, its beauties so remote from 
the ephemeral, and its underlying sadness were all quite 
outside my grasp at the time of first reading. In ad- 
dition to these mellow occupations Oliver is reading 
aloud to me — frequently en famille — Sorrow's " Bible 
in Spain," which is surely the most delightful round- 
about book ever written, zestful, various, full of the 
unexpected, and redolent of humor. . . . 



To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Berlin, Conn. 

18 February, 191 5 
Last week I ran up to Williamstown to see the 
performance of "Mrs. Bumpstead-Leigh " given by the 
college boys. It was great fun. Pure, unadulterated farce, 
of course; but keen, well studied, a most awfully clever 
performance. Every one seemed to love it. Being house- 



io8 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

party week, the audience swarmed with youth and 
beauty and high spirits. The fellow that played Mrs. 
Leigh was a handsome creature in his Paris clothes. A 
good actor, too, — though utterly without elocutionary 
skill. . . . 

CI 

To Mrs. Lucy James 

At Home 
12 March, 191 5 
. . . This present year has been disastrous, as you 
know, to almost all in my adventurous and bad pro- 
fession! The fact is, as Mrs. Fiske said to me the other 
day, the theatre in this country is in a very had way, and 
no one knows what is ahead. Under the circumstances 
it takes some resolution to stand by the ship, which 
may be sinking. The Moving Pictures have bewitched 
the public, giving them so much (such as it is!) for 
their money: and for so long now the poor public has 
been made the prey of theatrical ruffians (no other name 
is good enough for them!), who plunder their dollars and 
give nothing but noise and feathers in return, that the 
public is to be forgiven if now it turns from them in 
disgust and follows after the new gods. You see I wax 
eloquent on this theme! But as my bread and butter 
grows here, I have the right, methinks, to care. 

Mrs. Fiske expects to do a new comedy of mine next 
season — "Suki at Parnassus,'* a very mirthful bit of 
satire and burlesque which I know you would love, and 
I hope you can come to see it. Then, too, I have con- 
tracts for three other productions. Something should 
materiahze out of all this! If not, I shall shift my alle- 



TO HIS SISTER 109 

giance from the stage back to my earlier love, the novel. 
But I do so much prefer the stage, I hate to think of de- 
serting it. . . . 

CII 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

" Bonniehrae, "10 May, 1 9 1 5 

. . . The situation with my play, " Imogen," is 

desperate. The judgment upon it is that it is delightful, 

brilliant, etc., but high-brow; and no manager in New 

York will risk a production prejudged to be high-brow. 

The labors before L and me are to prove that the 

play is not high-brow, but of great popular appeal: that 
Mary Jane and Simeon Levinsky will co-mutually and 
severally laugh themselves into fits over it. How to 
prove this? We may decide after all on a stock try-out 
— but the disadvantages are obvious: stock produc- 
tions are so crude! . . . 

Evidently I '11 not be buying sapphires for some time 
to come. Pray content yourself with the assurance that 
the Future holds one for you. (In Heaven one of the 
twelve Gates is a sapphire. Fide Revelation xx.) . . . 

cm 

To HIS Sister 

At Home, 15 May, 191 5 
. . . Mrs. Fiske is in trouble over "Suki." Her 
fear now is that it is too light for her — no dramatic 
grip in the story. I think she may be right. It's true 
that everything is airy and unrealistic from the outset, 
and I can see quite well how she feels, facing the terrific 
problem she does. Of course the play can't be altered 



no LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

fundamentally now. I would n't do that for anything. 
Mrs. Fiske still promises to produce the piece, but prob- 
ably not next. She asks if I would like to submit it to 
Miss Tempest. Mrs. Fiske wrote very beautifully to 
me about the play, which she loves. " Don't, don't be 
discouraged, my dear hoy! 1 know this is fiendish — 
fiendish!" 

I 'm buying that land to the west of Willowfield. Had 
to be done. A man from Rocky Bay with six (6) children 
was just acquiring it. Forrest wrote me, renewing his 
old offer, and Tupper answered me it was all bona fide, 
so there was no other course open. Now we own water- 
front and barren too! Let us take pride therein even if 
we can't afford to live on our acres just now. Like so 
many gentry: land-poor! . . . 

CIV 

To Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske 

Litchfield, Conn. 

4 June, 191 5 

Such a wonderful horseback ride of thirty-five 

miles as I had this morning, reaching this beautiful old 

town (how you would adore it!) at seven a.m. I leave 

my mare here for the summer. 

A thousand greetings from the hills of spring. 

H. J. S. 

CV 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn., 10 June, 191 5 

. . . While in Boston I called on Ferris Greenslet, 

who has recently returned from five weeks in England. 

He is greatly oppressed by the awful magnitude of the 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM iii 

conflict now waging. He seems to feel that we shall have 
to get into it ourselves ere much longer. I almost hope 
so myself, I am feeling so strongly nowadays that all 
civilization, all that we hold precious, is at stake: that 
it is really Our war, and that we are merely leaving to 
others the fighting of it. My mind is not made up yet. 
I am not ready to preach this doctrine, but I may be 
within another month or two. . . . 

CVI 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Standish Arms, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

15 June, 191 5 
... It has really been a memorable sojourn for 
me, up here in my cave of the winds, so high above the 
harbor. My seven windows give me all lower Manhat- 
tan within hand-reach; all the bridges; the East River 
wharves, with ships from across the world right under 
my nose, loading and unloading, docking and casting 
loose: such a constant procession and melee of sea-craft 
of all kinds as fills this wonderful waterway you cannot 
imagine; and by night it is simply beyond description 
wonderful. . . . 

CVII 
To Miss Jean Bascom 

Aboard Freight-boat J. J. H. Brown 

Lake Superior 
^o July, 191 5 
Jean dear: 

The trip has been indescribably delightful so far 
and we are now speeding eastward, having discargoed at 



112 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

Duluth and taken on a new cargo at Ashland, Wisconsin. 
This afternoon the distant shores of the Ste. Marie River 
are coming in sight, and beginning to give the impres- 
sion of the narrowing lake: we shall soon be sailing down 
the river toward the Sault Ste. Marie, then pass through 
the great locks (quite thrilling it was, when we came, to 
jeel the boat rising bodily under you, as the water flooded 
the lock and raised us to the level of the northern lake) 
— after the locks, the lower river for many miles, with 
flat green shores, and idle, pleasant landscape. Sequitur 
the broad, deep waters of Huron. On the westward 
course I loved Huron best. The day we crossed it was 
perfect, flawless: cool, yet hot; bracing, and at the same 
time disposing to languor. I almost dread to recross it. 
Partly because perfect things ne se repetent pas, mais 
surtout parce que chaque lieue me portera plus proche 
du fm du voyage et cela me desole. What a dream of 
idle pleasure the whole outing has been! It seems to me 
that I have led this lotus life for months: I literally can- 
not believe, save as I face the calendar, that I have been 
only ten days absent from home. All ties have been so 
completely dissevered, all responsibilities so utterly cast 
off — just days of wind and golden sunshine, long, sweet 
twilights, ravishing noons; hours indoors of placid read- 
ing or card-games; long nights of sleep; meals savory 
and consumed with monstrous relish — 1 cannot tell 
you what I have done, because these days have no his- 
tory, or if they have, 't is writ in water. . . . 

Two or three of us can always withdraw to a corner 
of the deck, or to the lofty Bridge (whither the amiable 
captain allows us to mount at any moment of the day, 
or night), and if one prefers one's thoughts to all other 



TO MISS EVELYN GILL KLAHR 113 

company, nothing is said or thought of one's solitude 
that makes it seem ill-timed or discourteous. Thus I 
have spent many, many hours quite alone. I cannot 
exactly say "with my thoughts," for I have no thoughts. 
My mind has ceased to operate. It is in a sort of beatific 
stupor. . . . 

Meals are served in the after-house; the captain sits 
at the table-head, but he is the only member of the 
oificielle with whom the guests have any contact. He 
is a jolly, kind, unpretentious, fat little fellow, keen- 
eyed, and well versed in ship-lore; and he and I have 
become fast friends. 

... I am glad I do not live at Duluth. It is the West- 
ern City at its most typical: smoky, expensive, showy, 
raw, ugly. There are wonderful things about it, too. Its 
harbor is prodigious: and the great elevators, ore-docks, 
coal-docks, and lumber-docks have a grim, forceful pic- 
turesqueness, very American and very splendid. We 
docked there two days, and as we were miles from the 
city proper, we all went to "Duluth's grandest Hos- 
telry" for the interim. I avoided most of the usual 
"sight-seeing," which fatigues me, but prowled about 
in a blundering, happy way by myself a good deal, and 
feel that I know the "personality" of the city pretty 
well. . . . 

CVIII 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Berlin, Conn. 

6 August, 191 5 

... I cannot say that my New York visit brought 

me much happiness, since most of it was spent in re- 



114 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

covering from the ill news L had for me in regard 

to " Imogen." It seems she has practically canvassed all 
t?ie managerial possibilities for the play; and the verdict 
is unanimous against it; nay, more than that; it is pos- 
itively hostile. They hate the play. They think Imogen 
is the most awful thing ever created. One manager, who 
invited her to read the manuscript, got up and stamped 
and swore halfway through the first act, and refused to 
listen to another word. Similar scenes were enacted else- 
where. There's absolutely no chance whatever for the 
piece at the present time. Furthermore, her personal 
friends equally are arrayed against it: not one of them, 
beyond the individuals of whom I have told you, has a 
good word to say for it; and most of them have im- 
plored her, as she values her reputation, not to touch 
the part. . . . 

We had a scene together which would have been 
funny if it were n't so awfully heartbreaking. She was 
prostrated by the whole thing. She showed me docu- 
ments, official verdicts, letters, everything. The case 
was not only conclusive; it was overwhelming. 

Of course there's some big, significant reason behind 
such an unbroken array of adverse judgment; and I 
suppose that at last I see what it is. . . . 

So there I am ! This very quality in the part is, I have 
no doubt, what Greenslet felt in his reading of the play, 
and the same thing that you felt, but did not know 
quite how to phrase in the presence of my own enthusi- 
asm. Well, my enthusiasm has ebbed, I can tell you. I am 
actually convinced, and deeply convinced, too, that the 
play, in spite of everything I have put into it of the best 
that is in me, is no good. Here endeth the labor of seven 



TO OLIVER M. WIARD 115 

months in dust and ashes. No tears,' however. After one 
awful night, when it seemed to me I simply could n't 
bear it, I floated up serenely, almost with a grim joy, on 
the current of adversity; and now I have almost forgot- 
ten that there was such a thing as " Imogen." I am sure 
that the reason I could get over this thing so quickly 
was the splendid mental and physical condition I was in 
as a result of the trip. For I have never known myself to 
make such a quick recovery after a knock-down. 

... I simply will not be a derelict, a has-been, or a 
heap of bones and feathers. If I can't do this sort of 
thing successfully, I will do another sort of thing suc- 
cessfully. ... 

CIX 
To Oliver M. Wiard 

Arichaty Cape Breton 

25 August, 191 5 
. . . Late August on Isle Madame! You know 
how lovely it is. They have got most of the hay in, and 
the fields are so brightly, unbelievably green, while the 
fields still uncut are dark-waving bronze and blue. Skies 
are wild with drifting cloud-masses, and the gray sea is 
flecked with white. The air is still summery, but has a 
keen tang of autumn. How you would love it here to- 
day, and how I would love your company to-day! In 
many respects I do not much mind being alone, as you 
know; but in the presence of any unspeakable beauty, 
natural or of art, I hunger and thirst for the sympatheti- 
cally responsive soul. I realize, however, that for your 
own sake I should be willing to defer your physical 
presence till next summer, when larger means of re- 



ii6 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

galing you with pleasures will, I hope, be at my dis- 
posal. I have in mind chiefly the motorboat which this 
season lies silent and dismantled in the melancholy 
coffm-shed of "J. & W. Jean." I have been in once or 
twice to look at her; and on good days, like to-day, deep 
calleth unto deep, in my bosom, that she should be 
cleaving the green wave: but I know that this must not 
be. Patience, eager heart ! 

. . , My resolution is to write one more play and then 
to quit the campaign unless in the meantime some Star 
in the East shall have shined upon me. Perhaps it's this 
very resolution that makes the commencement of such a 
crucial labor difficult. Whatever the reason, I am willing 
to begin slowly. I think I have a good idea and I want 
to try to express it. If I can't, I shall conclude that either 
I don't fit the stage or the stage does n't fit me. I don't 
covet for myself a career which consists exclusively in 
battering my head resolutely against a jagged stone 
wall. ... 

CX 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

28 August, 191 5 
Dear Evelyn: 

Does the enclosed sprig of bay make you think, 
with a snifT of longing, of Arichat barrens, wind and 
sun-swept, and ringed-about with the blue sea, or does 
it evoke sordid memories of barber-shops which, per- 
haps, you have never entered, but must often have 
smelled, while passing down Clarion's Main Street? If 
the former, pray picture yourself my spirit companion 



TO HIS SISTER 117 

on a nice long stroll — I might better say scramble — 
from which I have just returned, for I was thinking of 
you and of your stories, and of last summer and of the 
trip on the Lakes and of next winter and of Life and 
Death and Eternity and my bank account and the un- 
written play, and all sorts of things jumbled together. 
The barrens are very wet indeed now, and it takes dex- 
terity of foot to skip over them without getting badly 
be-bogged; but they are certainly a great place for hav- 
ing thoughts; and if I was a poet I think I could have 
poems there. 

... I thank you more than I can say for your letter. I 
did not want you to care about " Imogen." I tried to tell 
her story as brazenly and heartlessly as I could; but it 
did help me to feel better about her that you should 
have felt sorry, too, over that disappointment. I have 
pretty successfully banished that play from mind for 
the present. I don't want to think about it; and fortu- 
nately I don't have to. Perhaps in a year's time I shall 
root it out again and read it with new eyes : and perhaps 
I '11 see some way of giving her another chance in the 
world. ... 

CXI 

To HIS Sister 

''Willowfield;' Arichat 

15 September, 191 5 
. . . Yesterday the weather was not quite so 
bleak, and Boucher took me for a long drive — Rocky 
Bay, Cap le Rond, D'Escousse, Poulamond, Grandique. 
We reached home just before dark in a downpour, and 
it blew and rained all night, and to-day is blowing and 



ii8 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

raining still. Oh, how wildly lovely the harbor is! I have 
been sitting here quietly near the stove for an hour, in 
your Consecrated Chariot, finishing "Iphigenia in the 
Taurians," the Murray translation you know, which is 
certainly superior to any translation I ever read of clas- 
sical poetry. How those Choruses do sing and soar! I 
never felt the force and the rapture of them in the 
Greek, though I recognized it mentally: but the labor of 
disentangling their intricate, abstruse utterance so di- 
minished the sense of movement. Not that I am not 
glad I knew them first in Greek. The thing you get in 
Greek is the essential Greekness of it all. This transla- 
tion seems as English as the English Bible: belonging to 
us fully as much as to an alien race. Next to the climax 
of recognition, which I thought supremely fine, I was 
struck by the scene between Iphigenia and Thoas, when 
the former appears bearing the sacred image aloft. She 
seemed to me a very majestic figure. The scene is not 
exciting, in a certain sense, since the ruse is so facile in 
execution, but magnificently pictorial (methought). . . . 

CXII 
To Oliver M. Wiard 

The Kitchen, " WillcrwfieW* 

20 September, 191 5 
. . . The cold is almost freezing: the harbor 
tosses and flies, all white and black, under a sky "cou- 
leur d'etain,'' as our Loti would say, or "aux nuances 
eternes d'etain." I am a little sorry to be shut up so 
long; yet certainly the sensation of snugness is one in 
which I revel: a crackling fire, a whistling wind, rain 
on the pane! comfort and friendliness and shelter! the 



TO OLIVER M. WIARD 119 

things that make Hfe livable in the homely sense. Some- 
times my thoughts turn Westward with longing, yet I 
think I shall hang on here till the middle of the month, 
anyhow. I have no fixed plan as yet. I have submitted 
two acts of the new play, and await a verdict. But I 
hardly expect a favorable decision in view of my own 
deep dissatisfaction with the work. ... It was the best 
I could do under the circumstances, that 's all I can say 
in my own defense: that, and my increasing confidence 
that I have hold of a highly promising theme: but I can 
hardly expect another to see what / see — fore-see! — 
there; and if the work does not prove acceptable I shall 
have no blame for the persons concerned; and my plan 
is to carry the work no farther in play-form, but to be- 
gin a novel on the same theme as soon as I can. 

. . . The amount of life-blood I have vainly shed 
these last years cries to me from the stones to forbear 
while yet there is time and hope and courage and 
strength. If the time for a revision of programme had to 
come, I am glad it came when it did. I have not yet gone 
too far to turn aside; and in turning aside I do not feel 
humiliated or beaten down. On the contrary, I feel that 
the diverse stressful experiences of these past years 
have deepened and made much richer my knowledge 
and love of human life. I am better equipped for the 
struggle, whatever the struggle is, and I do not know 
how better I could have invested my years. The chief dan- 
ger to be feared from the apparently unavailing effort 
is that the spirit will be embittered. That is what I am 
most solicitous to avoid in myself and one main reason 
why I think the present is the moment for me to deflect 
— for the present. 



120 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

Odd to be writing you so garrulously and eagerly of 
these peculiarly intimate problems. Please take it as 
the sincerest tribute I can pay to your tried and trusted 
affection: I know you care. 

Tve just finished ** Pendennis." Do you know it? It 
leaves me with mingled, contradictory feelings, though 
uppermost is profound admiration for its sincerity, per- 
spicacity, and strength. Irritation at occasional mawk- 
ishness is more acute just because the sentiment is usu- 
ally, it seems to me, so true and wholesome. I find 
myself asking: Did he say to himself: "Now for a sen- 
timental flourish" — were these passages written, as it 
were, to order — or are they, in some manner I do not 
yet fathom, the spontaneous expression of the same 
mind that seems, but for them, so sound and so just, 
according to my own standards? Are my own stand- 
ards wrong? The book challenges one in many points. I 
think it will remain one of my favorite big books. . . . 

CXIII 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

I October, 191 5 
. . . Enough of this! These are days of sweet re- 
cess. My mind is free to soar and sing, and it is doing 
so. These are the first really happy minutes I have had 
since the afternoon we came up Buffalo Creek into the 
Mosquito Belt. The horrible weight of heavy-hearted- 
ness has really lifted and taken wings — I don't know 
how — and whatever turns up next I know I can take it 
like myself; and if I turn away for the present from play- 



TO MISS EVELYN GILL KLAHR 121 

writing it will be with joy, not with bitterness. I hate 
bitterness and it does me so much harm, physically and 
morally. 

There's so much seasonal beauty here of a type quite 
new to me: no bright banners of trees, but wonderful 
purple and yellow and flame-stained stretches of bar- 
rens. All the bogs are like cups of fire. 

We are having a fit just now of bitter cold weather, 
and the wind sings and whistles, never resting till sun- 
set, and then up again at night. All the harbor is a foam- 
ing, spumy millrace, and, oh, how dark and forbidding 
and desolate are the hills that stretch off seaward where 
the surf booms! I love it wildly. I certainly was a sea- 
bird in some earlier existence, shrieking down the wind 
for sheer mad exhilaration. Don't press the thought too 
far. I don't think I ever was fond of raw fish or the other 
things sea-gulls relish. I was more, methinks, like the 
Holy Spirit, with dove wings, and feeding on celestial 
fire. Nothing more carnal, surely. . . . 

... In the meantime I've been writing a couple of 
Provincial short stories, and I 've one more in my head 
which I hope to do my first days at home. I never had 
very good luck selling stories about Arichat life, but 
these ideas appealed to me so, I really felt it my duty to 
put them on paper; and it was great fun. I did enjoy the 
writing; and in contrast to my abortive attempt of a 
year ago, it went as easy as could be. Some time, if you 
like, I 'II send you the manuscript. A good many amus- 
ing incidents have been happening hereabouts this sum- 
mer, more than usual, or else I 've been closer to them 
than usual — or else I 'm in a more "seeing" mood than 
usual. I 'II have lots of things to tell you when we meet. 



122 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

CXIV 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn. 

3 November, 191 5 
Dear Jean: 

I am waiting now for the word from New York 
that will settle my year's programme; but I shall prob- 
ably have to wait a week or two. In patience, however, 
and confidence, for I have been emphatically assured, 
verbally, that everything will "go through" all right. 

The offer was from George C. Tyler, the manager, 
and pleased me especially as coming from him, the man 
I admire most at present in the field and whom I have 
longed for years to be associated with — without much 
hope of any such consummation. He is interested in a 
Hungarian comedy, gave me a literal translation of it, 
and asked whether I would care to write an American 
play based on the story. I thought it over very care- 
fully. The essential idea appealed to me greatly and so 
seemed perfectly practicable; but almost the whole fab- 
ric of the existing play would have to be discarded, as it 
consists of adulteries, fornications, and blackmails. At 
first I could not see any means of getting an American 
story out of the "Denouement"; but finally I seemed 
to see a way; and when I talked it over with Tyler he 
was very enthusiastic. " Set that down on paper," said 
he, "and we'll make it the basis of a contract right 
away." I was n't quite clear enough in my ideas to put 
them immediately in writing, and then I lost two or three 
days through an unexpected ill turn : but finally, yes- 
terday, I got off my document. ... 



TO THE SAME 123 

CXV 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

New York,N.Y. 

8 November, 1 9 1 5 
. . . Rejoice with me! Sing for joy! Clap your 
hands, oh, ye daughters of Zion ! 

The contract is being drawn (the terms are settled) 
and I am to sign it Saturday. Then I withdraw to my 
burrow for six weeks. Not to hibernate, however. They 
plan a late-winter production if the script is ready in 
time. I mean it shall be ready. This is One Grand 
Chance! Zip! 

They are highly pleased with my Scenario No. 2, and 
I don't see why I should n't be able to develop it pretty 
fast, now, the foundation being so thoroughly laid. 

Last night we celebrated and went to see Grace 
George in "The Liars" — one of the best comedies ever 
I heard, and she (whom I never really cared for before) 
was adorable. How I wish you could have been with 
us! . . . 

CXVI 
To THE Same 

" Bonniebrae/' Berlin, Conn. 

17 November, 191 5 

. . . The days seem very quiet and aloof here in 

the silent country. Indian summer lingers beautifully. I 

dread the coming of the snow — the loss of these violet, 

russet landscapes, with the magical haze. 

I am reading at "Jean Christophe" again (vol. vii 
now) and I like it better and better, although the story 



124 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

has completely disappeared, and character-sketches and 
criticism have monopolized the author's pen. But such 
firm, fearless, challenging criticism! It does one good 

CXVII 

Toms Sister 

"Bonniebrae," Berlin 

20 November, 191 5 
... On Tuesday Harriet and I went to see the 
"Carmen" pictures with Geraldine Farrar. They were 
marvellously good. Her acting was quite incomparable. 
Very unconventional and realistic, yet so studiedly posed 
that the usual flickers of movement were almost elimi- 
nated. The photography was superb. Many effects al- 
most like silhouettes — just impressions of things hap- 
pening: then brilliant, clear pictures, full of animation. 
I wonder at the great indulgence shown by the censor- 
board toward certain love-scenes which were quite — 
well, my dear! — but I concluded that the death of 
Carmen (the wages of Sin being Death) probably ren- 
dered these scenes matter for edification. . . . 

CXVII I 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn. ' 

I December, 191 5 
... I saw Ethel Barry more in " Mrs. McChes- 
ney'* and liked her better than ever. Her voice is de- 
licious, her beauty dazzling, and her acting maturely 
good. Too individual to serve as model for another, and 
transgressing many sound rules, still effective. The play 
is trashily built, but entertaining, and a hit — the first 
she has had for years and years. 



TO MISS EVELYN GILL KLAHR 125 

I saw Grace George in "The New York Idea," which 
I had missed, years ago, with Mrs. Fiske. The comedy 
rendered by an unmagnetic "light" woman showed up 
all its flaws. Tinselly, clever, not really brilliant, as I ex- 
pected it to be. It needs tremendous spirit to carry it 
off, and this is altogether lacking in Miss George; and 
Emily Stevens I saw in a vicious, unpleasant, sordid 
play, "The Unchastened Woman," in which she gives 
a dazzlingly convincing portrayal of a passionless siren, 
an intellectual home-wrecker. A real triumph of acting 
— but oh, in such an ignoble vehicle. . . . 

CXIX 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Berlin, Conn, 

22 December, 191 5 
Evelyn dear: 

I started a long letter to you last week ... to 
prepare you for the reception of a very remarkable 
Christmas present which I had purchased for you the 
previous Saturday in New York at the Lafayette Fund 
Exhibition and Sale of the work of wounded French 
soldiers; and which was to be sent to me, here, first, in 
order that I might show it to my sister. But then came 
the Storm! 

. . . Coming from New York at the same time with 
your present was a wedding present for a Berlin girl 
who is being married to-morrow; and as yet not one 
word has been heard from the wandering parcels ! 

... At the present moment I am very pessimistic 
about your ever getting your present, for I put it this 
way: if wedding presents can't come through how can 



126 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

one even hope that Christmas presents will have a 
chance! I regret most cruelly now that I did n't bring 
the thing home under my arm; but how was I to know 
that only thirty hours later the most fearful storm since 
1888 was to descend upon us, sending all to pot! And 
not knowing this, I should have felt a little absurd and 
self-conscious with my arms so burstingly full as (a) 
suit-case, (b) walking-stick, (c) wedding present, and 
(d) Christmas present for Evelyn would have caused 
them to be. . . . And the cost, my dear, would appall 
you: I mean, the mere crude money cost! Being a sale 
for the benefit of the sick and wounded, you see! Of 
course, money means very little to me nowadays; I 
need hardly remind you of that. It oozes from my fin- 
gers and toes like sap from a maple tree in sugar-time. 
All I ask is: " Do I sincerely want this article?" — and 
if the answer is, "Yes, I do want this article!" I take 
the article, without inquiry as to the price. It's a very 
exquisite sensation; and can be enjoyed for several days 
without let or hindrance. I was in New York two days. 
I do not think it will happen again for quite a long while; 
but for those two days, 't was fairly rejuvenating!! . . . 
The most heartrending articles offered at the sale were 
a lot of little leather sewed balls, for children's playthings. 
These were made by the sickest and most helpless of the 
soldiers, and the shapes were far from perfectly round, 
and the stitching was irregular and very awkward; and 
everybody who saw the balls and knew their story im- 
mediately felt a lump come in his throat and wanted to 
buy a dozen or so; and the whole batch of a couple of 
hundred was sold in less than an hour. . . . 
^ Yesterday I finished the ninth volume of "Jean Chris- 



TO MRS. CARROLL L. MAXCY 127 

tophe" and began the tenth and last. I am very, very 
glad that 1 Ve read this big book for it is a big book, 
packed full of challenging, critical, awakening thoughts; 
and there are very many extraordinary character-sketches 
and episodes. The story as such is almost negligible; and 
it's undeniable that miles and miles of the narrative are 
boring. You pay for what you get; but you do get it; 
and I don't know where else that particular thing can 
be got: inspiration to firm, true, courageous action: 
contempt for anaemic indifference, for critical casuistics, 
for easy-going content, and for spiritual fatigue. The 
book seems to be singing all the time: Live! Live at all 
costs! Affirm! Do! Strive and suffer! Fear not! This is 
the central significance of Christophe's own personality; 
and always, wherever he goes, whomever he touches, 
the author represents him as conveying a breath of new 
life: a sort of awakening of the dead; a sort of opening of 
dull, blind eyes to the majesty of life; not to its beauty 
alone, or to its goodness, for Christophe knows its 
depths and frequent horribleness; but to its entrancing 
vitalness. He is a sort of torrent of unappeasable, un- 
constrictable life himself; and the breath of him thrills 
and inspires others. It's a pretty big idea. . . . 

cxx 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

Boston, Mass. 

8 January, 1916 
, . . Whatever happens, the work on the Hun- 
garian play has done wonders for me morally. I was 
so unspeakably down on my back last summer — a 



128 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

long fit of blues and ill-health such as I have n't known 
for seven years: it's really quite dreadful to think of, 
even now; and it was this occasion, flatteringly thrust 
upon me, along with a snug check, that set me on my 
feet. My imagination, too, was fagged, and I should 
have found it very hard to broach a purely original ven- 
ture. In this, I had the backing, the push, of another 
man's thought, to get me a-going, and once I got under 
way, of course I could keep it up of myself. I 'm not 
looking into the future at all. While this job lasts, I 'm 
content to live in it; and if nothing "turns up" spon- 
taneously, when this is done, time enough then (say I) 
to think. 

Another bit of luck that cheered me was the selling to 
a Movie concern of my biggest dramatic piece, " North- 
ward Ho!" which had been rendered unproduceable 
on account of the war. It had represented practically a 
year's work on my part, and I had taken its quash very 
hard. Of course the sale of it for picture purposes does 
not comfort me, as a writer, but merely as the possessor 
of a starveling bank account. That did get a boost; and 
I had the consolation of feeling that at least the play 
had earned me the "respectable clerk's salary" to 
which Stevenson says an author has a perfect right to 
aspire. ... 

I 've done some interesting reading these last months: 
four volumes of Fabre's insect-life-and-habit " Souve- 
nirs," uniquely engaging, whimsical, yet veracious, as 
scientific researches — I quite loved them and expect 
to go further; Willa Gather's novel "The Song of the 
Lark, " which seems to me very distinguished and in a 
new vein of American fiction; now Darwin's "Letters/' 



TO MISS EVELYN GILL KLAHR 129 

which are delightful in a quiet, unobstreperous, sincere 
fashion: a most lovely personality in its simplicity and 
modesty and humanness. 

. . . Tve been able to do a little on behalf of the suf- 
ferers over there, and it certainly does give one a sense 
of serving a big cause, which is good for one. What I 
have done personally is through a fine French woman 
friend here in Boston, who sends direct to relatives in 
Rouen, who, in turn, distribute to refugees and to desti- 
tute soldier-families. The French are the admiration of 
the world, nowadays. It has sometimes taken will power 
to believe in them in years past, but now I think we 
are all on our knees before their supreme, serene ideal- 
ism and devotion. But, oh, if this horror would only 
end! End, I mean, with light triumphant, not extin- 
guished! . . . 

CXXI 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

" Bonniebrae" 

25 January^ 19 16 
Daily Bulletin Number 999633 — Thursday — 
Edith got into me something awful when she 
found out what I 'd written you about your story, the 
" Family Davenport- Bed." She thought the story was a 
great deal more interesting than I would allow; and she 
was quite sure it would be an easy thing to fix all the 
difficulties up, and the result would be a real Fascinator. 
She said the mother and mother-love was the whole 
trouble. You had not succeeded in making the mother 
interesting. I quite realize the force of her point. Of 
course, if our curiosity were piqued in regard to the 



130 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

mother, we'd have a lot to live for! You don't touch 
that in the slightest degree. Now it's true such mothers 
don't openly give themselves away; but we've got to 
feel — at least, to suspect — that they feel, suffer, long, 
underneath; and that's what you completely leave 
out. Now Henry James could do it. You remember 
those people in the "Portrait of a Lady"? They were 
the kind that never under any circumstances gave them- 
selves away; but just once Isabel caught a look ex- 
changed between them when they didn't imagine she 
saw — just once! — but once was enough! and she 
brooded over it day and night, and it changed the whole 
course of her life. Now you could certainly get in a hint 
that would count for millions. Your young thing just 
thought once she saw something — what was it? — a 
gesture — a closing door — a frou-frou of a stately 
skirt whisked aside! — you know what I mean, — and 
she knew, from that moment, there was something! 
What! What!! Or she heard a groan, one night: just 
a breathed "Oh, God!!!" — but when she opened the 
door, Mrs. What-do-you-call-her was looking up at her 
with the same old baffling smile! Yet that cry in the 
night! Was it illusion? What did it mean!! 

As I write these lines I begin to have all sorts of little 
fascinating goose-fleshy thrills, from spine to toes ! 1 am 
sure you could get quite a bully suspense, and a lot of 
human interest. And 1 know that, as usual, you'll not 
take the words of my suggestion literally: but the spirit 
sketched behind the words. . . . 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 131 

CXXII 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn. 

30 January, 1916 
. . . Meanwhile my own life goes on with so 
much color and variegation! I do certainly rejoice in a 
happy year, after the black disappointments and de- 
pression of last spring and summer. I have adored this 
new play, loved every day's work on it, and think its 
future most bright. 

I cannot tell you all the projects that are astir for 
other plays. I think your wish will be fulfilled as to 
*'Suki." The Frohman people wish to produce it, as a 
vehicle for their youngest star, and we are consider- 
ing the alterations involved. Of course, as the play has 
never been finished, I am not in the least dismayed at 
the prospect of certain shiftings and some eliminations: 
and I fully believe the play will come out quite dash- 
ingly. You perhaps recall my earliest "gamine'' con- 
ception of the heroine, carried out in a first act which 
Mrs. Fiske admired, but felt the impracticability of for 
herself. Of course I am returning to that, and so pleased 
and relieved to do so. If the plan materializes and a con- 
tract is accorded me, I shall be tickled to death, and 
certainly all signs now favor. There is a germination of 
new possibilities for " Imogen" too (my particular dar- 
ling child), but first I have ever so much rewriting to do, 
as I am resolved to set the date of the play back to 
1880 again. So, you see, whatever happens, I have busy, 
busy months ahead. . . . 



132 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

CXXIH 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Berlin, Conn. 

30 January, 19 16 
Evelyn dear: 

I do not think you need to feel at all suspicious 
about that stone. I suppose what has led you to feel that 
way is the realization that I had not, at the present 
moment, the money to spend for a genuine gem, no 
matter for whom. But I will tell you just exactly how it 
was. I got the ring at a very remarkable bargain. On ac- 
count of the war, the price of most gems has mounted 
tremendously; but it seems this particular kind of sap- 
phire is an exception. There's only one place where you 
can get them, in this country; but if you know that 
place, there's no trouble at all. The dealers' name is 
Woolworth and Company; and they have a chain of 
specialty shops all through the country. Lovely, lovely 
things! The girl who sold me the ring (I told her it was 
for my grandmother; but there, do you think she'd be- 
lieve me? She looked so knowing!) — this girl said that 
ever so many rings of just that pattern were being worn 
this winter. There is one little item I think you ought to 
know about. The pretty box cost extra. They do not 
sell the box with the ring. I asked the girl if they would 
take back the box, supposing my grandmother did not 
care to keep it; and she said, yes; but she would not 
promise that the money would be refunded. I suppose 
she was afraid there might be some scratch or mark on 
the box or that the spring would be out of order from 
so much opening and shutting. 
... I saw Mrs. Fiske's play. It's a wretched thing, 



TO MISS EVELYN GILL KLAHR 133 

dramaturgically speaking, but charmingly bright and 
refreshing and novel; and I'm happy to say is a pro- 
nounced hit. Her own part is delectable, so full of 
breeze. . . . 

CXXIV 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Standish Arms 
Columbia Heights, Brooklyn 
15 February, 1916 
. . . How I wish you were here this afternoon. I 
am alone in my eyrie ten floors above the street, with 
my outlook surveying all the harbor — the busy 
wharves, the countless tugs and ferries actively crossing 
and recrossing, now and then the hulk of a ship slowly 
steaming in or out : beyond, the gray, mist-bounded har- 
bor, and the suggestion in that of the four corners of the 
earth, very far off, across many leagues of dangerous 
sea. ... 

cxxv 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Standish Arms 
Columbia Heights, Brooklyn 
27 February, 1916 
... I was death-droppingly tired when I came 
down to town last Thursday, but since arriving I've 
rested splendidly. . . . I 've had no opportunity even for 
work, so I 've just run around and enjoyed myself with 
my friends, spent ten or twelve hours at a stretch in 
bed, and revelled — literally caroused — in this intoxi- 
cating view from my tenth-floor, harbor-sweeping win- 



134 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

dow. I 've told you all about it, so I '11 not repeat. Only 
in winter crispness and under the blast of winter winds 
there's a difference in splendor. But any way at all it's 
supreme. I will tell you why it does me more good than 
any other view in the world save the views at Arichat — 
it came to me the other day: the title of Romain Rol- 
land's new book on the war, written from his retreat in 
Switzerland, "Audessus de la Melee." . . . 

CXXVI 

To THE Same 

Berlin, Conn. 
23 May, 1916 
Evelyn dear: 

Your sympathy was not at all too late to be 
timely, for after the grippe state of physique followed 
the grippe state of mind, which is even harder to cure, 
but considerably alleviated by kind words and thoughts. 
Usually I like to have more or less the same maladies 
you do — only, of course, not so ferociously: but when 
it comes to neuritis, you overstepped your prerogatives, 
and that peeves me. Don't you know that neuritis is the 
special property of my family? We don't allow other 
people to have neuritis except as a mark of particular 
favor. I think it was presuming for you to go and have 
it, and I hope, just to serve you right, you did n't have 
it bad at all, but just a sloppy, bourgeois imitation of Our 
Malady. And now you ask solicitously after my health? 
Well, not to keep you in hope and dread any longer, I '11 
say that I'm really almost my usual self again. The 
main drawback is this cursed feeling of feebleness in my 
members (viz: arms and legs) so that the least little 



TO MRS. LUCY JAMES 135 

spurt of outdoor work uses me up. But this last infirm- 
ity is being eliminated. I take a pretty yellow tonic, the 
name of which I don't know, but I wish I did, because 
I 'd urge it on you, for I 'm sure 't would help pseudo- 
neuritis. ... In the meantime it seems pleasant to be 
idle, watch the rain quietly dripping through fresh leaf- 
age, and ponder on the vanity of human wishes. ... . 

CXXVII 

To Mrs. Lucy James 

Cape Breton 
" JVillowfield," Arichai 
5 July, 1916 
My dear Lady of the Rock: 

You are one of the people whom it's fun to " sit 
down and write to" — just as it's fun to sit down and 
read one of your delightful letters, like yourself over- 
flowing with interest in the two worlds we live in, Nature 
and Humanity. 

I had a most exciting and tantalizing winter — ending 
in a miserable debacle. A new comedy, *'Suki," was put 
on forme, and I had the highest hopes of it. So did many 
others. We played three weeks out of town, and were 
scheduled to be on Broadway this month: announce- 
ments "up" and all! And then came one of those ig- 
nominious theatrical squabbles in the Management 
(Management, Star, Author, and Agent were all in- 
volved) and the play was shelved. Heartbreak! Yes, it 
was a knockout! Temporarily! They insist that they are 
going to produce the play next season. But I am beyond 
putting faith in mere promises. We'll see what happens. 
It's a sweet, merry, sophisticated comedy and I 'm sure 



136 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

you'd like it: and if it does come on, you must make a 
little run down to the city and go to see it with me. 
C'est entendu? By contract, too, another comedy of 
mine should be produced ere the season is done. Who 
knows! Perhaps it will be! Yes, it's a disgusting busi- 
ness, mon amie! You put all your faith, and all your 
heart, and all your exuberance into it — and you get a 
slap in the face or a kick somewhere else. Oh, " I could 
a tale unfold!" — but I '11 spare you! And the fact re- 
mains I do love the theatre and I love play-writing; and 
I 'm not quite ready yet to sing, with old disillusionized 
Ben Jonson, "Farewell the loathed Stage!" 

But, as I was saying: It was more or less on prospects 
I bought my new motor: so now, to atone for that rash- 
ness, I'm living with impressive parsimony! No gay 
side trips to Gaspesia! No happy-go-lucky enjoyment 
of life's pleasures. I quite am face to face with " Real- 
ities." Yet, withal, so comfortable here, and so snugly 
provided for, that I feel like a shipwrecked mariner 
drinking hot coffee out of a Thermos bottle. 

We are greatly enjoying a visit from my good mother, 
who will probably be with us till Edith returns home 
next month. 

Very sincerely yours, 

Harry James Smith 

CXXVIII 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

A rich at, Cape Breton 

7 July, 1916 
... I believe that last winter's practical experi- 
ence should prove of pronounced help to me. I believe. 



TO MISS EVELYN GILL KLAHR 137 

too, that I am very close to Success. So close that it would 
be idiotic not to pursue it ardently and arduously along 
this chosen course for a while longer. I feel this the more 
confidently because I know that all the practice and all 
the lessons I am getting, as comedian, will serve me also if 
I turn to other fields of literary activity later. This severe 
discipline, this persistence, and — yes — sacrifice, are all 
needful parts in a successful author's equipment. . . . 

CXXIX 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

19 July, 1916 
Dear Evelyn: 

So far my life here has been rather a slum. I 
came down from home full of high ambitions and ran 
first into rather a vicious bronchitis (which is now van- 
ishing) and into a perfect orgy of trouble over the new 
motor. This trouble is far harder to cure than bronchitis. 
I would have returned it to Detroit; but found that so 
many awful papers had to be awfully filled out, with 
oaths before a magistrate certifying to the maiden 
name of my great grandmother's pet cat (this is what 
the war has done to international red-tape) that I 
gave up in despair! . . . And for further troubles — 
that scenario I sold to the Vitagraph people — I think 
I told you about it? — was n't sold after all. Just think 
of the shock and the ignominy. The president of the 
company did n't like it because it was too sordid and 
so refused to sign the check. And I sent them one 
more (just as a final favor!) and they did n't like that 
either; so now that's the end of my fling at pictures. 



138 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

. . . The work laid out for me for these next weeks is 
to get a new second act for "John Paul." Tyler con- 
cluded that the second act I had done was too much 
of the farce type. Bless you, he first of all wanted farce! 
Still, the criticism was a good one. The idea of the play 
has proved so valid and interesting, as an idea, that it 
seems to claim a more realistic and convincing treat- 
ment than was suggested by the original Hungarian 
play. You see what I mean: — could a man actually do, 
in American society, what John Paul did? If so, then 
make 'em actually believe your story. Don't treat it 
like farce, but as a thing which really and truly was so. 
In other words, make it less showy, but more true. 
I am pleased with the suggestion, because I too think 
the play's calibre will be much improved: it will take on 
a value and gain an interest. But it seems to be an aw- 
fully hard thing to do. I 'm having my troubles rearrang- 
ing that second act, which depended on a farcial inci- 
dent for its climax, to wit, the blocking of the man, whose 
dress-suit John Paul had annexed, from telling his story 
to the railroad president; there was finally a scrap, you 
know, and some disordered garments; and all that is 
now thrown out and I 've nothing to take its place — 
nothing of curtain calibre. I think, however, that I 'm 
working toward something. I really do like the play 
enough and believe in it enough so that it's a pleasure 
to attack it again. . . . 

... Mrs. Fiske, bless her heart, sent me word the 
other day that I was never for one moment to forget 
that I was the best comedian in America, if not on 
either side of the water, and that 1 ought to have five 
comedies playing in New York at the present time. But 



TO THE SAME 139 

there you are! And "Suki" languishes in cold storage; 
and "Imogen" is knocked about from pillar to post, 
finding none to receive her; and if "John Paul" fails to 
suit the whim of a mercurial and capricious despot, he 
too goes to the limbo of forgotten things. Meanwhile 
my white hairs increase apace. ... 

Well, so wags the foot of Time. I wish each wag were 
a shower of shekels — y^t, most of the time I feel very 
cheerful; and certainly I get a lot of fun along the 
way. ... 

cxxx 

To THE Same 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

15 August, 1 91 6 
. . . Enough for now that the boat flits along like 
a swallow, so quiet and so sure. It's inebriating! Wait 
till next year and let's get drunk together!* 

Since writing the sentence starred (*) thus, I ' ve been 
out sailing for two hours, accompanied by the man Bou- 
cher who is my assistant. It was wildly rough round 
Jerseyman's Island: we shipped the tops of flying seas; 
the boat tore her way up and down the long waves; you 
had to shout for sheer excitement. And the little motor 
never once did a thing but purr. 

This morning I sent off two acts of "John Paul." I 
feel that the work is of appreciably higher calibre than 
before. There is no farce in it now. I hope Tyler will 
agree with me. If he does I shall press on to the finish 
with enthusiasm. If not — but I think he's going to! He 
promised to send me word, quick; and till I hear, I shall 
{a) take some vacation, Q?) write some letters, {c) per- 



140 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

haps try my hand at a story. 1 got one in mind last win- 
ter — an Arichat comedy — which I would Hke to write 
out, and which I think would very possibly sell; and a 
little check would cheer me amazingly about now. 

. . . The carraway crop has been large and fine this 
year, but the market is small. The War, I presume! . . . 

CXXXI 

To THE Same 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

2 September y 191 6 
. . . But before I forget it: you misinterpreted 
my caution regarding the carraway. I wanted you to 
space your nibbles wisely so as to get the maximum as 
well as the optimum of satisfaction, and the reason I 
stressed the finality of the contribution was by no means 
stinginess on my part : no, indeed, I would gladly have 
culled a peck for you; but merely that the season for 
carraway (a very brief, precious season) had passed its 
zenith; only a few poor shrivelled seeds still clung to the 
brown stems; and even before I heard from you in reply 
— or shall I say, retort? — there was no more to be had. 
As my old Aunt Sophia used to say: 

With the cutting of the hay 
Comes the end of the carraway! — 

and in another place: 

Carraway in June 
Is a month too soon. 

Carraway in July 

Flavors cookies, soup, and pie. 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 141 

Garraway in August 
Might as well be sawdust. 

Garraway in September 
Never do I remember. 

Garraway in October, — 
Are you drunk or sober? 

I think there were some more couplets; but these will 
do to prove to you how harshly you misread my kind 
meaning. 

I suppose you know Tm alone here now. Mother 
went early last week; Edith and Miss Steele followed 
the next day. Martha deserted me a day later. Then I 
moved over to the house of my best of friends. I don't 
know why they tolerate me as a yearly ordeal, except 
that I really do try to keep on best behavior there. And 
throw in for good measure an extra touch of buoyancy 
and vivacity. They are dear souls, all. 

On the joys of motor-boating, I shall say nothing this 
once. Joys they are, all joys excelling. ... 

GXXXII 

To Miss Jeam Bascom 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

15 September, 19 16 

... It quite mellows my spirits to hear you tell 
of Gonnecticut. You almost know it better than I. At 
least you have traversed some sections still unknown to 
me. I do love that river as passionately as one can an 
object of sight. Its gentle curves, its placid variety, its 



142 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

aspect of fruitfulness all touch me. The tobacco fields 
have a luscious beauty in the afternoon sunhght — so 
blue and so full of shadow. . . . 

CXXXIII 

To HIS Family 

Standish Arms, Sunday 

8 November, 191 6 
Dear People at Home: 

I 'm having a nice quiet restful day, staying here 
in my room while it rains and blows outside, and 
very glad of a little vacation from "Oh, Imogen!" . . . 
There's no question of the play showing up capitally. 
Everybody likes it, even the stage hands; and so far as 
I can judge, there's not any terrifying weak spot com- 
ing into view. It all seems to hold together; and so few 
changes have been required, to date, that I begin to 
think I really have managed to learn a little bit about 
the technique of play-writing in the past five years. I 
don't know what we'd do if it were n't for Mrs. Dixey's 
very great gift of direction, a surprising talent in a 
woman. I take off my hat to her, and feel more than 
ever an ignoramus as I watch her getting results. Strug- 
gle as I will to master them, the most effective points 
of stage management still escape me; and I am only glad 
that I have the sense to recognize them when they are 
revealed by somebody else. It is an exacting art, cer- 
tainly: one which requires great self-confidence and a 
full acquaintance with all the external means — the ex- 
ternalizing means — of expression. I can construct the 
tones, the gesture, but the illustrative business does not 
come to me: the telling cross, the new position, the new 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 143 

stage-picture. Mrs. Dixey has the instinct for this as 
strongly as Mrs. Fiske. It is a good thing that we are 
in perfect agreement as to the spirit of the interpreta- 
tion! . . . 

. . . You will judge from the foregoing paragraphs 
that I have very little to talk about these days besides 
Play. Such is the case. Nevertheless, between-times, I 
get into a good many arguments of a political nature; 
and I am sorry enough that I can't cast my vote this 
year for Wilson, for I have been coming over to him 
more and more strongly as the days have gone by. I 
have reasons for liking him better; and my feelings 
about the Republican campaign have changed from in- 
difference to a very active contempt. If that is all they 
have to say for themselves, quoth I, then we shall cer- 
tainly be fools to change ! . . . 

CXXXIV 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Standi sh Arms 
Columbia Heights, Brooklyn 
8 November, 1916 
... I am keeping in first-class form, myself, 
though my only way of doing this is to let everything 
else go but rehearsals and bed. I have seen almost none 
of my friends because sociability seems such an awful tax 
when I have nothing to bring to it but fatigued nerves. I 
see a great many plays, evenings, but always alone: then 
walk home, across the Bridge, over the gleaming black 
River, under the stars. How I do love the Bridge, and 
the Harbor, and this airy corner of Brooklyn, perched 
over the wharves! . . . 



144 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

cxxxv 

To HIS Sister 

Berlin, Conn. 

12 November, 191 6 
Sister dear: 

Rehearsal of "Imogen" ended for the day yes- 
terday at one-twenty. I had an appointment with 
George Tyler at one-thirty and was free again at one- 
forty-five. I started to walk to the Subway, my port- 
folio under my elbow, when suddenly it popped into my 
head that it would be fun to make a try for the two 
o'clock train home and have a night and a Sunday in 
the country. Imperilling my life in a mad dash across 
Fifth Avenue, where cross-town was being held up for 
up-and-down-town traffic, I managed to reach the sta- 
tion just in time; and I entered our home front door at 
half-past five. I had counted on finding a scanty but 
sufficient store of nighties, combs, etc., in my ward- 
robe, and I was not disappointed, except in the absence 
of a toothbrush; but this morning I found an old one 
downstairs which I thought, or at least, hoped — might 
once have been mine: I gave it an antiseptic bath and 
used it with a clean conscience. 

. . . And these November days — though this one is 
just a little dark and sombre — are my pet days of the 
year, as you know, and cannot be at all appreciated, 
in their colorfulness and poetry, in the city. They are 
fine, livable days there; but without any appeal to the 
imagination and heart. . . . 

I don't remember whether I told you or not that 
"John Paul Bart" has been made over, by me, to Cohan 
and Harris: I mean, with my consent, as Mr. Klaw did 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 145 

not like the final version of the play at all. Tyler keeps 
an interest in the production; and he tells me that the 
new management are enthusiastic about the piece and 
intend to produce right away. The big surprise follows. 
Cohan and Harris want to feature Grant Mitchell. I al- 
most tumbled over when I heard this. But I am sin- 
cerely pleased. Mitchell is a born comedian; he is also 
very, very charming and makes every part he plays an 
appeal to the heart. He will give a real characterization 
to the part, and I think this will help it; also it will be a 
great novelty. . . . 

CXXXVI 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Brooklyn, N. Y. 

27 December, 1916 
. . . The rehearsals of "A Tailor-Made Man" 
are going delightfully well. Such a splendid, big- 
hearted, enthusiastic, straight concern as Cohan and 
Harris is almost unique in the business, and, oh, can 
you imagine what a relief to me! We have a first-rate 
cast (numbering twenty-two!), a fine director, and the 
production will be worthy of the play. I really expect 
big results this time. I never could expect that, at any 
moment with " Imogen." I only hoped that somehow or 
other we might compel decent treatment. But we could 
n't. It was hopeless. I realize it now. Yet curse as I will, 
I have to admit that the "try-out" of "Imogen" did 
me a great deal of good, taught me a lot of things about 
play-writing and directing. Perhaps in no other way 
could I have learned so much in so short a time as thus 
being thrown on my own resources. And my faith in 



146 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

the play is brighter than ever. I know the thing is to 
be a success, in due time — and I must be wilHng to 
wait. . . . 

CXXXVII 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Standish Arms, Brooklyn 

13 January, 191 7 
. . . Did they tell you that on the occasion of my 
one day's visit at home (January 3d) I was aghast to be 
greeted by a waddling, adipose, inert Patrick? 

The transformation had come about in so few weeks* 
time! 

Isn't life a mystery! Grief had kept him from romp- 
ing, but not from eating. Result: the very thing that 
testified to his love made him unlovely! . . . 

CXXXVIII 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Standish Arms, Brooklyn 

6 February, 191 7 
Our week in Buffalo (with "A Tailor-Made 
Man") was really extraordinary. We did fully twice 
the business expected and the whole city was talking 
about the play. Columbus is Grant Mitchell's home 
town: consequently our opening there was not a fair 
test of the play's appeal : it was simply a riot of enthusi- 
asm. I was delighted, for his sake, that he had such a 
wonderful reception, for this is really his first hig, out- 
standing part, after many years of fine, tireless effort, 
and I love to see such effort rewarded. The feeling is 
that "John Paul" will be the making of him as a star. 



TO HIS MOTHER 147 

He is certainly adorable in the part. Mais revenons! 
The plan now is to reorganize the company at once and 
as soon as possible to send us either to Philadelphia or 
to Boston for a run, opening before the end of Febru- 
ary. With that in view I have rushed back ahead of the 
play to do some important reconstruction in Act II. 
There are some hilariously funny parvenus in this act ; 
the public love them, but I feel, and so does the man- 
agement, that they hurt the play — diminish its veri- 
similitude — and I am going to cut them out bodily and 
write in some characters of a finer social mould, even at 
the cost of funniness. I hoped I could begin the writing 
to-day: but I was still too tired. I have promised it for 
Monday, and if to-morrow is only a good day for me, I 
think I can keep my promise. But, of course, the trouble 
is that I am nervously unstrung and exhausted. Just 
think: I have only had one day off since October 
15th! 

. . . Meanwhile it is nice to remind myself that all 
signs look bright for the play's future. The attitude of the 
management is the best sign of all — et moi, qui vous 
parle, je sais, apres les doleances de "Suki" et de mon 
" Imogen." This firm will not betray me. . . . 

CXXXIX 

To HIS Mother 

New York City 

12 February, 191 7 
Dear Mother: 

Our opening in Boston is to be either the 12th of 
March or the 5th, depending upon the business done by 
the play that precedes us at the Hollis Street Theatre. 



148 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

But with the date so far off in any case, they've decided 
to defer the beginning of our rehearsals until the 19th, 
and this leaves me, I think, with a good chance to rest 
and enjoy life and do some odd jobs in the days just 
ahead. Of course, I may be put on some more writing at 
once. It seems Mr. Cohan has a new idea for the second 
act and perhaps he will want to have me work it out with 
him immediately. In any case I shan't worry myself to 
death or overwork. I 'd like to come home again: but I 
think here is probably the place for me, in view of what 
may be wanted of me any day at the office. 

I did have a lovely little visit with you all, and I wish 
it could have lasted days and days and days. 

Ever so much love, 

Harry 

CXL 

To HIS Sister 

Standish Arms, Brooklyn 

14 February, 191 7 
. . . Finding that Mr. Cohan was n't ready yet 
to undertake the work on Act Two, 1 pitched in and be- 
gan revising and copying " Imogen" like mad. It seemed 
like the divinely appointed moment, and the work has 
gone splendidly. I 'm two thirds through copying Act 1 1 
now. Very little more new writing to do: just straight- 
away revision and copying, so I hope by Friday p.m. to 
have it done. If only they'll leave me alone till then. It 
is rather fun, these quiet, busy days up here in my airy 
cliff home! And, oh! that is such a sweet, merry play: I 
am mad about it, in its present form. . . . 



TO MRS. CARROLL L. MAXCY 149 

CXLI 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Standi sh Arms, Brooklyn 

3 March, 191 7 
... I had two or three days of illness, the end of 
last week, due to one frightful night of grief and dis- 
couragement over some changes that had been forced 
into "A Tailor-Made Man." Of course I made myself 
sick; I knew better, and I ought to have been able to 
gain control of myself in time, but for once all my little 
recipes failed me, and I had chills and a temperature 
and all the rest; and most of this past week has been 
spent in semi-convalescence. I ran up to the country for 
a part of two days, and I think that helped in the restor- 
ative work, for 1 was in a mood to bask in the tender re- 
gard of my family. It's singular to observe how as years 
go on 1 seem to become more, rather than less, depend- 
ent on affection. Not admiration, which means relatively 
little to me — but just the constant awareness that peo- 
ple are fond of me. I wonder if this is a form of fatty 
degeneration. ... 

CXLI I 

To Mrs. Carroll L. Maxcy 

Boston, Mass. 

17 March, 191 7 
Dear Lady Lou: 

I've thought of you often and often these past 
ten days and wished for a chance to let you know, by a 
personal word, of the delightful thing that has come to 
pass; but my memory of these same days is a confused 
one: I seem chiefly to have been standing on my head, 



150 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

pivoting round like a teetotem, both legs waving in the 
air, manuscript in both hands, a fountain pen in my 
teeth. Is there anything in God's world like a new "pro- 
duction"! I doubt it. 

The special stress is just over. I expect to be here, 
with the play, only two or three more days: and then 
home, to the dear country (muddy and bleak, I know, 
but dear all the same), for a rest. I 've only been at home 
two days since October — my only days of freedom 
from this surcharged, over-stimulating atmosphere of 
the theatre: and I tell you. Til enjoy some just plain 
everydayness for a while. That is to say, if once I can 
learn how to breathe real air again. I suppose 't will 
seem like a vacuum for the first week or so. 

Yes, the play is going enormously here. The hope is 
that we shall have a real "run" at the Hollis — stay on 
for six, eight, ten weeks. No one dares prophesy — this 
being Boston — but we have high hopes. At the least 
we shall remain till April 7th. I do hope you can get 
over to see it, for I know you would adore it as much 
as I do. (Can an author speak more naively than 
that?) . . . 

CXLIII 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

At Home 

25 March, 191 7 
. . . The big appeal of this play is its heart ap- 
peal. Right here the critics gave us no help; for not one 
of them discovered this remarkable fact. They spoke of 
the abundance of fun in the play — but in this field 
it cannot bear comparison with successful farces; they 



TO MRS. LUCY JAMES 151 

spoke of its interesting story — but of course its plot is 
not so gripping as the plot of a successful melodrama. 
Just what they failed to discern is the thing that is our 
unique, incontestable appeal for popular suffrage: hu- 
man interest, the affection bestowed by the entire audi- 
ence on John Paul from the moment he enters the play. 
After all, critics are a blind lot, are n't they! Clever 
with their ink-pots, prolific of words, makers of phrases. 
Blind! Ipse dixit! 

I do not pretend, of course, that I am satisfied with 
the play. There are details in it still that bother me. But 
in an affair that is necessarily one of approximations, I 
think that the product is creditable to me. 

In fact all but one or two things in the play that 
displeased me have now been eliminated, and the play 
comes closer to being what I want it to be than any 
piece of work I have yet done. The firm have treated me 
enormously well and I shall be grateful to them all my 
life. . . . 

CXLIV 

To Mrs. Lucy James 

Berlin^ Conn. 

25 March, 191 7 
My dear Friend Mrs. James-by-the-Sea: 

It gives me a nice neighborly glow to sit down — 
even at my typewriter (which you must forgive this 
time) — for a bit of a chat with you, after the lapse of 
many moons. I love to come back to old friends: it 
seems to me they are the fixed stars in one's sky. So 
many things in Hfe change and pass; but the blessed 
friendships are there; and after far-wanderings and 



152 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

excitements, adventures manifold, disappointments and 
victories, it is like a home-coming to reach out the hand 
to them once more. 

This has been a particularly eventful winter for me. 
From the very day of my return, in October, from Nova 
Scotia, I have been bound, hand and foot, to two new 
plays. One of them had a try-out in the fall. We began 
rehearsals the 20th of October; opened on the road the 
last week in November; played three weeks; and before 
those three weeks were over, I had to leave the show 
and hurry back to New York where another play was 
being made ready for its try-out. New rehearsals; new 
worries; new despairs; new hopes. What a business this 
of the theatre is! You live so intensely. It must be the 
gambler's passion; I can't make anything else out of it. 
You ask WHY, and there is no answer at all except that, 
some way or other, it is your life ! . . . 

This is really, at last, the Big thing I have been wait- 
ing for so long. I have wonderful, enthusiastic, ambi- 
tious management behind me; the production is very 
handsome; the cast superb; Grant Mitchell, who plays 
the principal role, is simply inimitable, the most ador- 
able being who ever wore pants — though not at all 
the typical matinee hero, but so sturdy and straight- 
forward and nice — you want to pat him on the back 
and say God-bless-you! — and in fact, everything that 
could be done for the play has been done. I feel very 
happy and very grateful to everybody. 

1 left Boston, at last, the middle of this past week. I 
was really all tired out. I knew it with my mind; but I 
was too excited and keyed-up to feel it, at all; and it was 
not until I was here, again, in the quiet, dull country. 



TO MISS HELEN WILLARD 153 

that the fatigue came to the surface. All of a sudden it 
seemed as if I could scarcely drag one foot after the other, 
or open my mouth to converse — and you may well be- 
lieve I must be tired when conversation is a hardship 
tome!! 

I do not feel like my usual self yet; but the worst is 
over; and in a few days I expect to take a normal man's 
interest in life once more. 

It seems funny not to say anything about the war; 
but after all, the subject is so tremendous that 1 'd 
rather not say anything than to say ten or twelve inade- 
quate words. We feel so deeply and so passionately 
these days: what's the use of even trying to say any- 
thing? I am glad that soon we Americans are to be hav- 
ing a share in things: it is high time. 

All my good wishes to you! 

Edith wishes to be kindly remembered. 

Give my love to the Rock! Are the birds beginning to 
whirl and scream about it once more? How I would 
adore seeing them! Ever, with affection, yours, 

Harry James Smith 

CXLV 
To Miss Helen Willard 

Berlin, Conn., 15 Aprily 191 7 
. . . Nobody knows quite how much this success 
of the play means to me. You know about as well as 
anybody, however; because you know pretty much the 
mood I was in last summer and the very great impor- 
tance which 1 attached to this venture; also you know, 
better than most of them, the horrors of my experience 
with " Imogen," which, if one had ever had any heart 



154 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

left for the business, was calculated to destroy all that 
remained. When I found that last Saturday we were 
doing capacity business at both matinee and evening, 
I began to feel that life was really worth-while after 
all. At night they had to put the orchestra under the 
stage and fill up the space with chairs! Wasn't that 
sweet? Only an occasional plaintive, squeaky strain 
from the instruments percolated as far as the audience; 
but, oh, that better music, those overtones that mur- 
mured, Capacity, Capacity!! ... 

CXLVI 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Berlin, Conn., 28 May, 191 7 
. . . Our little town is quite beautiful now; and 
our little house and grounds the beautifulest spot of all. 
My gardens are proud things. . . . 

I don't feel as you do about the changed world we live 
in. The world is changed, of course. But not much more 
exciting than it has always been for me. It does make 
some kinds of effort seem fatuous, I know, — this ter- 
rific intensity of living and dying all about us. But, after 
all, not one's big efforts! Only that what was trifling and 
piddy-widdy before is simply unspeakable now. Lots of 
make-believes and imitations are exploding before our 
eyes. . . . 

cxLvn 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Berlin, Conn., 31 May, 191 7 

Yesterday our Berlin Home Guard marched 

proudly at the head of the Memorial Day procession 



TO DR. JOHN A. MacDONALD 155 

and listened patriotically to I .dori't know how many 
prayers and addresses, and drank countless cups of lem- 
onade served by blooming Daughters of Veterans. As a 
result I had a wretched headachey night, and to-day I 
am idling my hours away instead of toiling. The day in- 
vites to idleness, anyhow, with its whispering zephyrs 
and Arabian fragrances. Our wistaria drapes one whole 
face of the house with pendent odorous clusters of blue. 
More subtle in appeal to eye and nostril is the lily-of- 
the-valley. Ours doubtless would offer a sorry compari- 
son with your famous banks, but we have rather more 
floriferousness than usual — enough to satisfy our mod- 
est demands. Thank you for your neighborly offer of 
some cullings from Hedge Lawn. Were we as barren as in 
some years past I should eagerly take advantage of it. 
. . . Patrick left us this morning for a summer in 
South Dennis, on the Cape. He was accompanied by 
my little nephew, and, from Boston on, my sister Fanny 
was to act as additional escort, I shall miss him here: 
but with the coming of hot weather (if ever hot weather 
does come !) he will be infinitely better off on the coast, 
with many daily plunges and much crab-hunting. . . . 

CXLVIII 
To Dr. John A. MacDonald 

Berlin, Conn. 
Thursday, 31 May, 191 7 
Dear Old John: 

I hope you won't hate me forever if I bother you 
with a question or two. Please consider it in the cause of 
American Theatrical Art, for which no sacrifice of time 
and trouble is to be considered too great. 



156 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

In the first act of a new play I *m working at, I have 
the hero bring in an unconscious man in his arms. Hero 
is a lumberman of thirty-two, a "rough diamond"; and 
his charge is a small-sized, middle-aged Canuck. 

Canuck has been knocked out in a fight; he has in- 
sulted some one and a fight has ensued and he has got 
punched in such a way that he's out; it's winter; and 
hero has brought him into the little country school- 
house to bring him to. My query is: What steps would 
be the best ones in this process? 

Little heroine, who is the school teacher, is the person 
who rightly should take charge; and what she does 
should be the perfect epitome of efficiency and first-aid 
science : also — since this is a play and not real life — 
there should be nothing displeasing about it. 

I picture hero laying down his charge on a bench. 
Heroine gets schoolbooks and puts under his head. She 
loosens his collar. Listens to his heart. Feels his ribs to 
discover if any are broken. I assume the man has been 
punched in the solar plexus. Is there anything else re- 
quired to bring him to? Do you slap his face or hands? 

I want about three minutes in all before the man opens 
his eyes. Then for a little while he must be a little dizzy 
and bewildered. Would it be suitable to have him 
slightly nauseated? — I mean, just enough so that he 
will choose to lie rather still for a while? And when he 
walks again (in about eight or nine minutes) he must 
be unsteady enough to require help from hero. 

All I want, you see, is a possible case, permitting 
these various things (attention to the hurt man) while 
lumberman and school teacher get acquainted. In the 
ordinary course of life they would never have met: this 



TO THE SAME 157 

emergency, requiring them to cooperate in first-aid, 
brings them up next each other double quick, and things 
begin to happen which develop in the second act into a 
love-story — see? 

If what I have briefly sketched out above is accepta- 
ble, I wish you 'd just drop me a word to that effect on a 
post-card; and if you think of other details that ought 
to be there, I'd be frightfully grateful if you'd suggest 
them to me. 

Cohan and Harris are much interested in this new 
play and they would like to give it a try-out production 
in July if I can get it ready by then. So I'm letting 
other plans go by the board and giving up all my time 
to it. I think it will turn out to be a very good little 
play, and with a timely "message" which is, perhaps, 
worth more just now than what I could give to the 
world along any other line. 

I 'm counting on coming over to Boston some day be- 
fore long; and I hope we can get a good little visit. I 've 
lots of things I want to talk over with you. I shall try 
and get around before the run of *' ATailor-Made Man" 
is over — and I think that will be in about a fortnight. 

All kinds of good wishes. 

Harry 

CXLIX 
To THE Same 

*' Bonniebrae " 
Saturday, 2 June, 1 9 1 7 
Dear Jack: 

Thanks with all my heart. That was just what I 
wanted. Now watch me eat it up ! Gratefully yours, 

Harry 



158 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

CL 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Boston, Mass. 
26 June, 191 7 
. . . Three things opened as possibilities: a trial 
production of the new play, in July; the course in wire- 
less at Columbia; and a work for the National Surgical 
Dressings Committee — namely, to go down to Canada 
and collect and prepare sphagnum moss for shipment to 
the hospitals in France. Well, the first appeared to be 
ruled out, by circumstances. I definitely gave up any 
thought of production till October, on the advice of the 
firm. Then the wireless was dropped, after very thor- 
ough study. The sphagnum work developed into some- 
thing momentous and urgent, and I offered my time 
and funds to it, promising to leave on the mission by 
July 15th and give three months. The next day Cohan 
and Harris offered me a production for the new play in 
July — to begin rehearsal the 9th. I was a good deal 
knocked out; but 1 finally decided that my job was cut 
out for me in the Nova Scotia bogs, and I turned down 
the offer. Maybe 1 was a fool. Still, having given my 
word, I think I shall feel happier if I keep it. The moss 
is still practically unknown here, though in great de- 
mand, and the Canadian Red Cross is sending twenty- 
five thousand dressings per month across. I am to be 
taught the technique by the Secretary of the Canadian 
Committee in Guysboro, and then shall develop opera- 
tions near Arichat, employing several workers, and ship- 
ping the prepared moss to New York. . . . 



TO MISS ALICE KAUSER 159 

CLI 

To Miss Alice Kauser 

Arichat, Nova Scotia 

3 August, 1 91 7 
Dear Miss Kauser: 

This is to report that I have now been starting 
the sphagnum work here in my own domain this week, 
and that the outlook is as good as can be. 

I spent eight days first in Guysboro, Nova Scotia, 
working with Dr. Porter, who turned out (as we fore- 
saw) to be a very charming and kind person, and at the 
same time highly scientific in habits of thought and im- 
mensely capable. For my purposes, he knew everything 
that was to be known to a degree. We visited some 
perfectly inaccessible bogs, twenty miles from any- 
where, were drenched in rains, lost in fogs, stalled in im- 
passable roads; had all the adventures necessary for a 
normal year in the space of a few days. But I returned 
to my own island full of ardor and enthusiasm: and it 
has pleased me enormously that, after nearly a week's 
search I have located a very large amount of the best 
variety of moss. This variety (Papillosum) is not at all 
easy to come on. Sphagnum may abound, and does, in 
almost every bog; but the common varieties are rather 
stringy and harsh, with but low absorptive value. The 
Papillosum, and one or two allied species (Palustre, and 
certain Magillanica) are, when dried, fluffy and papery 
in texture, with a quite wonderful absorbency. If you 
will lay the dried and pressed specimens I enclose in a 
bit of water (either immersed or only in contact) you 
will observe what a peculiar genius the thing has for 
taking up liquid. 



i6o LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

I have been working this week with all my might and 
main; for the start-off of the campaign is all-important; 
and at the same time that I was instructing my four girl 
helpers I had to be scouring the country-side for good 
bogs containing the right moss. The man who was to as- 
sist me was taken dangerously sick some days ago, so I 
have everything on my own shoulders. But I am really 
gratified by the good start made. The girls who are at 
the sorting are interested and industrious: and every- 
body hereabouts seems to feel a real pride in the under- 
taking. I was a bit afraid they would be skeptical about 
it and laugh up their sleeves. 

So far I am alone here: but my sister is to arrive at 
the end of next week, and she will bring two women 
friends who will help about the work; and a man friend 
of mine is due to arrive in a few days. As soon as I can 
delegate some of my exacting responsibility, I shall take 
a fortnight "off" to finish the Mary Ryan play. 

... So far as the future of the sphagnum enterprise is 
concerned, I think the best course is to push my present 
work as hard as I can throughout this summer. Then I 
shall have results to show: testimonials, criticisms, in- 
fluence, and a kind of authority in the business; and 
with these behind me, and the backing of the Surgical 
Dressings Committee, I can approach the Red Cross 
anew, with much more likelihood of winning their in- 
terest. I suggest, therefore, that you make no move in 
their direction at the present moment, although I think 
it most generous and admirable of you to offer to go for 
me to headquarters with samples of moss, etc. At an- 
other date I may call on you for just that service. But 
I feel pretty sure that just now my only task is to 



TO GRANT MITCHELL i6i 

make good with the people I am already associated 
with: and this, I believe, will lead to greater things. 

My girls wear uniforms and I believe feel just a little 
proud of them. Their names are Sabrina and Eveline 
Thibeault and Josephine and Lina-May Doyen: not a 
bad galaxy! 

I hear the weather has been cruelly hot with you. 
Accept my sympathy! I am free here from all that. We 
are having an unusual amount of fog and rain; but the 
temperature is uniformly adorable and I hope for sun- 
shine later. 

All good wishes ever! 

Yours devotedly, 

Harry James 

I enclose a copy of Dr. Porter's excellent article on 
the moss. You may keep it, if you like, as I have two 
more. 

CLH 

To Grant Mitchell 

" Willowfield*' A rich at 

19 August, 191 7 
Dear Grant: 

By the time this reaches you you will be deep in, 
once more. You can't imagine how many million miles 
away I feel : it takes all the grim resolution I can muster 
to stay on here, in my bogs, when the other half, or 
two thirds of my life (my double life) is coming into 
being, once more, over there! I have thought of you — 
of you personally — so often, during these past days of 
rehearsal, and wondered what your new problems and 



i62 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

vicissitudes — if there were any — might be. Your let- 
ter gave me some news of which I was mightily glad: 
that Miss MacKellar promised well (I was sure she 
would), that the women looked fresh and charming, that 
Sam Forrest seemed fit as a fiddle. I'm particularly 
glad of this last, in view of the work that's ahead, for 
him and me, on the Mary Ryan play. You don't speak 
of your own health. I hope it's too good to need any 
mention. Mine is "potentially" fine — but my body is 
lame and sore from days of constant bog-trotting. All I 
need is physical rest, and that I'm now going to get, 
several days of it, before starting my final writing on 
the new play. 

Our sphagnum work here is now organized and run- 
ning like machinery. Three friends from home are help- 
ing me in the management, and I have one man and ten 
girls from this vicinity, in my employ. We three men 
undertake to keep the workroom supplied with moss, 
and if you think we are kept on the jump, you think 
rightly. 

There are plenty of bogs in this country; but the sur- 
gical moss is much harder to locate than I imagined: 
you can wade a dozen bogs, up to your boot-tops, and 
not find a patch of it. When you do locate a "culture" 
you proceed to "work" it, that is, pull it up, handful by 
handful, wringing out the water which fills the moss like 
a soaked sponge; then you bag your haul and carry it, 
on your shoulders, to the shore, where you load it aboard 
the motor-boat. Yesterday afternoon we brought four 
sacks back home which I consider very good for a half- 
day's work. My first shipment of dried and graded 
sphagnum was made two days ago, consisting of only 



TO GRANT MITCHELL 163 

four packing-cases lightly filled. But this was the equiv- 
alent of about fifty bags of fresh moss, so you can imag- 
ine how the bulk and texture is changed by the drying 
process; and I calculate that I shipped enough moss for 
about ten thousand dressings — so that's a beginning, 
anyhow. 

I babble of sphagnum just as if it were the chief con- 
cern of your life. My excuse is the very friendly interest 
which you took in the undertaking. It would have been 
great fun if you could have spent a few days here with 
me. The country was never so adorable, in its northern, 
changeful greenness, swept all about with sea and sky; 
and the air is the most bracing I have ever breathed 
— it almost puts wings to one's heels. My dear little 
motor-boat runs like a charm. 

And I have a new dog, a little Micmac Indian dog, 
that hid under my shed, one eye knocked out and a leg 
broken, refusing to die, and insisting on being adopted. 
Aside from his mono-optical dissymmetry he's quite a 
pretty little dog, and very companionable: and we call 
him Dick Dead-Eye. He is slowly learning English, but 
some of his Micmac habits cling to him — for better or 
worse — such as a preference for sitting on rather than 
under tables. 

When you have a moment's time to send me a line 
or two, do remember that I shall be grateful for news. 
Doubly so because of my distance from the centre of 
activities. 

Edith joins me in all sorts of good wishes. If Sam For- 
rest is still with you, please thank him for his fine letter, 
and tell him I '11 write very shortly. He'll be glad to be 
told, too, that I am actually started, once more, on my 



i64 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

business of playwright and that I shall continue to be 
a playwright. . . . 

Affectionately yours, 

Harry 

P.S. I have shaved off my moustache and am found 
to possess a most quizzical and disconcerting upper lip, 
and those who teased for the change, now tease for an 
immediate return to the status quo ante. But that, I tell 
them, will take time and thought. 

CLIII 
To Madame G. Pepin Burel 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

21 September, 191 7 

. . . This is only to say that I think there is no 

reason why 1 should n't become parrain to the little 

Rene of whom you write. Will you tell me what to do? I 

will act at once, as soon as informed. . . . 

CLIV 
To Miss Jean Bascom 

Arichat, Cape Breton 

I October, 191 7 
Ch^reAmie: 

Saturday was our last day of sphagnitis, sup- 
posedly, but a spell of bad weather prolongs the final 
drying and packing, which is going on to-day. Twenty- 
four boxes in all have been shipped, and I calculate 
enough moss for more than ninety thousand surgical 
dressings. Fourteen girls in my employ the last weeks 
and everything operating at high pressure. What a 



TO MADAME G. PEPIN BUREL 165 

relief to have it over! — And what a reHef to have 
finished the fourth act of that damn play! I typed the 
final "Curtain" Saturday afternoon! 

I am dead tired, but in perfectly good health, other- 
wise, and I think my first days in New York (where I 
am to arrive Friday) will be free from wearing respon- 
sibility and I expect to get rested. We leave here 
Wednesday, 7 a.m. Edith is in wretched form — has 
been far below par all summer. I am glad she will soon 
be under her doctor's eye again. I am to go through to 
New York all rail — two days and two nights of travel. 
The news of the "Tailor-Made Man" continues as 
good as possible. Business practically capacity. And 
everybody as friendly and pleased! I have a fine lit- 
tle letter of congratulations from Charles M. Schwab 
of Bethlehem Steel! Also from one of the Emergency 
Shipbuilding Presidents, Mr. Sutphen — both men, of 
course, touched by the propaganda of the play! This 
amuses and at the same time flatters me inordinately! 

I must to my packing ! So much of it, and so unenliv- 
ening. Ever your 

Harry 

CLV 
To Madame G. Pepin Burel 

Standish Arms, Brooklyn 

19 October, 191 7 
... I thank you for your news regarding the 
mother of my god-child Rene: I have written her (in 
my bad French!) and enclosed a draft for 200 francs, 
promising more when she would write me of the little 
boy's requirements. 



i66 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

... I have been almost dead with work since I re- 
turned to New York. My oeuvre for the Surgical Dress- 
ings Committee is rapidly expanding, and it takes all 
my time and all my strength, and hardest of all, I am 
preparing for the production of a new play the rehear- 
sals of which begin next month. . . . 

CLVI 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Standish Arms, Brooklyn 

3 November, 191 7 
My dear Jean: 

Crowded, higglety-pigglety days ! I plan so much 
and do so little; it's discouraging. The days seem aeons 
agone when I had leisure mornings every now and then 
for quiet, expansive letter-writing. They were good days, 
and I wonder if they will ever come again. Will the war, 
having swallowed us all up, and everything we prize 
most, finally disgorge us all again, to take our old place 
again in the accustomed pattern? Doubtless it is ridicu- 
lously premature even to think of such an event; yet 
the spirit will devoutly crave it in spite of one's reason. 

Along with other cares, I have had the newest play to 
look out for, in the absence of Mr. Forrest: that is, an 
informal rehearsal every two or three days for the chil- 
dren who are to play such important parts; and a lot of 
preliminary scout-work, such as interviewing possible 
actors, and revising and overseeing work on the script. 

Probably you have heard reports of the way things 
are going with the "Tailor-Man" — that it is the 
acknowledged hit of the season, outdoing all other 
legitimate attractions in box-office receipts? This, of 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 167 

course, is quite jolly for me. I do certainly enjoy the 
sense of freedom and power which a large (relatively 
large) income confers; and in these days, surtout, with 
the world ablaze, and the need of succor so infinitely 
beyond one's ability to supply, I still can feel that I am 
accomplishing something with my contributions. Hav- 
ing no one dependent on me enables me to put prac- 
tically everything into war relief. 

Yet I should not disguise from you the fact that I 
have allowed myself one conspicuous action of self-in- 
dulgence: namely, bought a new baby-grand piano. It 
is not here yet, in my rooms; but is promised for the 
middle of next week; and I quite glow at the thought 
of having music again available, under my fingers, at 
any hour of day or night. Poor musician that I am, still 
the thing means a great deal to me as recreation — more, 
in my hours of mental fatigue, than anything else 
means; and this is what justifies me — if anything does 

— in spending so much money, in these days, upon 
myself. My old instrument, still in very good form, 
I have presented to my sister-in-law, who is a real mu- 
sician and has been deprived for several years of a 
decent piano. 

It is just after eleven of a bright late-autumnal day 

— one of OUR days! — and I am about to pack a few 
articles of attire, including a sweater and a pair of hip 
boots, into my suit-case, and to take train for a spot 
in the Jersey pine-belt, near the coast, where I am told a 
very good quality of sphagnum is to be found, in abun- 
dance. I have been desirous of getting down to Tom's 
River ever since my return to New York; but there has 
been no chance for it. I really look forward to a day in 



i68 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

the open air, bog-trotting. I have been too long bereft of 
this strange pastime. 

I have just had a telephone from Oliver Wiard say- 
ing that he would be able to join me, in my explora- 
tions, to-morrow. That will be great fun. The hardest 
phase of the work, for me, is its loneliness. Unfortu- 
nately he has no rubber boots available; but at least he 
can sit on the border of the bog and smile at me ! 

I have a lovely room over here on the Heights this 
year. I wish you could look in on me — and my view. I 
am on the twelfth floor, two higher than last winter; 
and on a corner of the building which permits a view, in 
addition to everything else, of the East River bridges. 
They are splendid beyond words at night, after the city 
lights are mostly dimmed: great soaring arches of 
beaded lights, with the ceaseless crawling movement on 
them of the little electric cars and the trains, to and fro. 

Please tell me how you are and what's going on. 

Ever devotedly your 

Harry 

CLVII 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Brooklyn, N.Y. 

15 November, 191 7 
. . . Things have come along with a rush lately. 
The American Red Cross has to-day offered me the 
chairmanship of a Committee on Sphagnum, to be 
formed by myself. I am not contented with the proposi- 
tion as outlined, because the scope of the committee is 
not defined; and I am at this moment waiting in an 
ante-room for a conference which I trust will lead me 



TO J. R. FLANNERY 169 

ultimately to Davison or Gibson or one of the heads 
of the War Council. 

... All my personal instincts are to leave the prop- 
osition alone. Yet I am driven grimly along by the 
knowledge that the Red Cross is the machine to handle 
this job Big. Pershing has cabled for twenty to thirty 
carloads of sphagnum dressings, at once! Conceive the 
confusion! What is sphagnum? Can you give us at least 
two carloads by next week? And the danger of the whole 
thing being wrecked through ignorance and private 
greed! The florists say, Here is sphagnum, and try to 
sell rubbish suitable, at best, for packing saucers. 

. . . I'm losing my nerve about the war. Is n't it 
black, black as pot! . . . 

CLVIII 

To ]. R. Flannery, American Red Cross 

Brooklyn, N. Y. 

1 1 December, 1 9 1 7 
... I have been staved off and sidetracked and 
held up in carrying my effort forward, not, I certainly 
believe, by any individual's ill-will, but by one bad turn 
of circumstances after another, until I am utterly worn 
out and discouraged; and this latest communication, 
with its indication of still further delays and red-tape 
before any effective action can be inaugurated, is the last 
straw. I would be only too glad to wash my hands of the 
whole thing except that 1 still feel that if I am wanted it 
is my duty to stick. But as for frittering my life away in 
seeking the right to serve, I 'm done with it. I 'm here, if 
they want me; but I am not going after the thing a step 
further. It's too heartbreaking to be so anxious to do 



lyo LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

things — big things — and still to see nothing doing 
except a repetition of the same old process. . . . 

CLIX 

To Madame G. Pepin Burel 

Standish Arms, Brooklyn, N. Y. 

13 December, 191 7 
. . . Yes, I went to see "Scapin" that very night 
and found it even more brilliant and captivating than 
you described! I loved the Ceremonie du Couronne- 
ment: I never saw anything more exquisite. I hope to go 
frequently in future to see the productions of this very 
remarkable little company. Copeau has genius, there's 
no doubt of it ! . . . 

CLX 

To HIS Mother 

Headquarters American Red Cross 
Washington, D.C., December, 191 7 
Mother dear: 

My two days here have been busy ones, you can 
imagine. I hope they have been profitable. I Ve got 
through a lot of correspondence, and plans for the next 
steps in sphagnum development are decided on. The 
first thing is to start an Experimental Workroom in 
New York and I hope we can get that under way next 
week. I shall return to the city as soon as we are done at 
Atlantic City and I don't propose to lose any more time 
than the inevitable red-tape demands. The trip to the 
Coast will come next on the schedule. 

You can't imagine what Washington is like, these 
days. Absolutely bursting! I thought I would have to 



TO ROY B. SMITH 171 

sleep at the Police Station, since all the hotels in the 
list would have nothing to do with me, but at last a 
Family Hotel, to which I had a letter of recommenda- 
tion, let me sleep in a dark closet once used as a linen 
closet. I did n't sleep much, but at least I was safe. 

I expect to run up to Philadelphia to-night, where 
I expect something more comfortable, and I go from 
there, to-morrow early in the day, to Atlantic City. I 
hope I '11 find some word from home at the theatre. 
Ever so much love, Harry 

CLXI 

To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

Standish Arms, Brooklyn 

21 December, 191 7 
. . . The show really looks promising; there's no 
use trying to be skeptical about it, although skepticism 
is the becoming mood. Miss Ryan is measuring up to the 
part splendidly: she has caught the zest and buoyancy 
of it so well: the tension and emotion she always had. I 
believe that whatever happens to the play, she will win 
a personal triumph — for which I am right glad, as she is 
a dear, courageous girl, with a long fight behind her. . . . 



CLXI I 



To Roy B. Smith 



Standish Arms, Brooklyn 

30 January, 191 8 
Dear Brother: 

You may have heard, from some other source, 
that a decision was suddenly made to bring the new 
play into New York next week. We open at the " Play- 



172 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

house" Monday matinee, the 4th of February. I be- 
Heve this is a very good plan, in view of the distressing 
theatrical depression in Boston. And there is a timeH- 
ness about the play which I dread losing the advantage 
of, here. That timeliness will be of more value, I mean, 
here, than anywhere else; for elsewhere (in the event of 
success) the New York run will be more than a counter- 
balancing asset. I believe the chances for such a success 
on Broadway are favorable; though I'm not so fatuous 
as to believe that the thing is a certainty: in this busi- 
ness nothing is ever that. F misreported me if she 

said C. & H. were sure the thing would be a big hit. But 
they believe it's a good gamble. And we all do. The dan- 
gers of defeat are on the score of the play's simplicity 
and countryness: whether Broadway wants that or does 
not want it. Well, we shall soon know. 

We have been working wickedly hard these past ten 
days. Mr. Cohan has given me a great deal of price- 
less assistance as advisory surgeon. He has an infallible 
touch for the sore spots. This kind of repair work is the 
hardest of any. I am about worn out. But why should I 
care, if the cause is a just one? Heroics!! . . . 

CLXIII 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Brooklyn, N.Y. 

6 February, 1918 
Ch^re Amie: 

. . . You'll rejoice to know that "The Little 
Teacher" went over with a bang yesterday: the biggest 
and most emphatic sort of instantaneous hit. I am 
greatly relieved and deeply happy about it. I have been 



TO DR. J. A. HARTWELL 173 

resting, abed, most of the day, trying to quiet my jump- 
ing nerves: for the past weeks have curiously unstrung 
me. The final days were the hardest of all, for there 
were many who prophesied disaster on Broadway. I 
have seen only a few papers, the "criticisms" (so 
called) of which are various ; but they one and all admit 
that the play is an enormous hit. And as for the play's 
merits — / know those sufficiently well and can dis- 
pense with hearing them recounted by others. 

No more to-day, but I'll write soon again. Mother 
has been alarmingly ill with pneumonia, but is better. I 
start the sphagnum workroom here Thursday, and shall 
spend Sunday at home — my first visit there since De- 
cember. 

Ever your loyal 

Harry 

CLXIV 

To Dr. J. A. Hartwell, American Red Cross 

Brooklyn, N. Y. 

13 February, 19 18 
My dear Major: 

It may not have been fair for me to say Yes so 
positively to the questions you put to me this noon as to 
the availability of unlimited supplies of surgical sphag- 
num. My answer was based on such full and careful re- 
ports as have been secured by me during the past two or 
three months of persistent inquiry. But reports, both 
you and I know, often prove fallible. 

My trip to the Coast is partly to authenticate these 
reports and to make estimates. I cannot doubt, however, 
that all the moss we can want is to be had there: the 



174 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

problems will be securing labor of collection and ar- 
ranging transportation. 

We shall have to meet these same problems in the 
East, when our bogs open. There is no conceivable 
doubt but that plenty of moss for all needs can be got 
from New Jersey, Eastern Maine, Lower Nova Scotia, 
and Newfoundland. The practical difificulties of getting 
it remain to be dealt with. But why should we not ex- 
pect this to be done successfully? 

With this qualification, I am ready to repeat my Yes. 
But in fairness to you, I wished to make sure that I had 
not given a false report to you. 

Loyally yours, 

Harry James Smith 

No answer required. 

CLXV 
To HIS Mother 

Headquarters American Red Cross 
Washington, D.C. 
25 February, 191 8 
Mother dear: 

I have finished my day of work and conference 
here and am only waiting now for my letters of intro- 
duction, etc., to be finished, and then I shall go out and 
stare at the Washington Monument till time for dinner; 
and by the time I have finished dinner, to judge by the 
long dalliance of the average waiter in this town, it will 
be time to run for my train and start (at 8.30) out on 
my long journey. To-morrow at 5 p.m. I should reach 
Chicago and leave at 10.30 on the Chicago, Milwaukee, 
St. Paul through Express (the Olympian) for Seattle, 



TO HIS MOTHER 175 

arriving there Friday evening. Now that I am really 
ready to go, I am tremendously anxious to go, and I ex- 
pect to gather in a whole lot of interesting new experi- 
ences. All has gone promisingly here to-day. My plans 
for the Western work are approved and the people out 
there are to be permitted also to make up a few thou- 
sand dressings right away. I have twenty pounds of the 
new wood-pulp tissue with me (it completely fills my 
steamer trunk!) as well as an exhibit of the new type 
dressings, and a series of workroom specifications drawn 
up in our "laboratory" last week, so I can give them 
a good demonstration out there — unless I forget my 
cunning en route. 

I was so glad of your cheering little letter, Mother, 
and I like to know how deeply you are interested in the 
success of this enterprise. I do want it to go well, for now 
so many strong people are backing it that it has every 
chance to make good, and if it does n't fulfil expecta- 
tions the fault will be either Sphagnum's or Mine! But 
it's going to succeed. 

Dr. Porter and I discussed at length the practicability 
of cooperation in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland be- 
tween the Canadian Red Cross and ours, and I 'm de- 
lighted that the people here feel most friendly toward 
the project. It's going to make collection in Canada 
much easier for us Americans — eliminating any local 
jealousy or hostility — and I think as an instance of in- 
ternational good-will it is bound to impress people favor- 
ably. But of course, any full development of plans must 
wait till my return home from the West. If I do not 
bring back a good report from there, the whole enter- 
prise may come to an end. 



176 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

I hope you are continuing to gain strength, in prepa- 
ration for your outing: and I hope both you and sister 
Fanny are going to get lots and lots of good out of it. 
Lovingly your son, 

Harry 

CLXVI 

To Miss Jean Bascom 

Somewhere in W. Minn. 

27 February, 191 8 
ChIre Amie: 

Sunday night I left New York; Monday I spent 
in Washington at Red Cross Headquarters; yesterday I 
was on the B. & O. in Chicago; to-day we are putting 
Minneapolis behind us; to-morrow we shall be in the 
Rockies; and the next day — evening — I reach the 
first goal of my trip. Just now a thousand leagues of rich 
black Minnesota wheat earth stretch off and away on 
every side — monotonous and very dead-looking, just 
bared by the disappearing snow, but wonderfully stimu- 
lating to the imagination. The vision leaps forward six 
months and sees fields ripen into harvest, while the 
world waits, hungry, anxious, and great issues are in 
the balance. 

. . . Three weeks ago the National Workroom was 
established in New York with a Sphagnum Department 
under my charge; and a dozen certified instructors were 
delegated to help me in making various types of experi- 
mental dressings, etc. The results were most gratifying. 
I have now left that work in the hands of a superior and 
my next task is to determine how extensive an amount 
of sphagnum is available. 



TO MISS JEAN BASCOM 177 

You would laugh to see my sheaf of letters of intro- 
duction, — one to the Governor of Alaska, though I am 
sure not to get so far north as Sitka. My best hunt- 
ing-ground I expect to be the chain of islands west of 
British Columbia. And the steamships have orders to 
put me ashore or pick me up wherever the whim de- 
mands. I look forward to an adventurous time of it — 
just the sort of undertaking that will refresh and tonic 
me after this exhausting period of overwork indoors. 
Already my two long nights on the train have given me 
a new sense of being alive. I really was on the verge of 
collapse last week — trembling and shaky and unable to 
sleep — and I am so glad to get away. I want to be in 
New York again the first week in April. This may not 
prove possible: but other sphagnum problems will be 
very pressing by that time and there is no one yet to 
attack them but me. 

"The Little Teacher," by the way, is not for the jeune 
fille, preeminently. You would be interested to see the 
make-up of the audiences, mostly hotel people, rather 
smart and worldly, but touched, somehow, with the de- 
sire to love a simple tale simply told. They do love it — 
and I love them for loving it, because I believe the play 
rides on the crest of contemporary motives and im- 
pulses. It is not a play I would, or could, have written 
myself five years ago. 

The sunlight suddenly breaks, golden, over acres — 
miles — of corn stubble. T is thriUing! And now we are 
amid the black fallow again. En avant! 

Tout a vous, 

Harry 



178 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

CLXVH 
To Miss Evelyn Gill Klahr 

On the train en route to Seattle 

27 February, 191 8 
... If I have a claim to any distinctive place as a 
writer it's right here. I 've no desire to imprint my pe- 
culiarities, my personal whim or taste, my separate self, 
on my work. I can't feel things that way. A master 
architect does n't spread his name all over his prize 
building. The bigger he is the less he cares about that. 
He designs the best building he can and that's his re- 
ward. 

... An architect must depend on the cooperation of 
a hundred workers in different capacities — bricklayers, 
steamfitters, glaziers. So must a playwright. The electri- 
cian, the wardrobe woman, must pull with the play just 
as loyally as the star and the management if you hope to 
put the thing across. A success is a triumph of coopera- 
tion and the author ought to be very humble about it — 
proud of them, not of himself. . . . 

CLXVIII 
To HIS Mother 

Seattle, Washington 

6 March, 19 18 
My dearest Mother: 

It seems funny that I have been here almost five 
days and still have not written a real, personal letter to 
anybody. No doubt it suggests that I 've been busy, and 
such is indeed the case. I 've often worked harder in my 
life, but never before had so many demands on my at- 
tention all coming at the same time, and the kinds of 



TO HIS MOTHER 179 

demands that are especially taxing because they're all 
from individuals and none such as you can meet quietly, 
on paper, alone in your room. Td like to know how 
many people I 've shaken hands with and talked Sphag- 
num to! Not to speak of my public talks! My cheeks 
bloom and blush just at the thought of some of the im- 
promptu speeches I Ve given forth — supported only by 
the knowledge that if / knew little about my subject, 
my auditors knew less. This afternoon when a whole 
workroomful of sphagnum workers stood up and ap- 
plauded me, as one woman, because I had been so con- 
descending as to come and speak a few words to them, I 
felt that I had indeed entered upon a new role, and very 
silly (thought I) I must look in it. 

It is all part of the very fine good-will which this 
country loves to show to strangers. The Chamber of 
Commerce is to take me for an auto ride next Mon- 
day — a "Seeing Seattle" expedition, of course — and 
that evening I am to dine at the President's table (the 
President of the University) and the next night to ad- 
dress the Faculty! — Help! The worst of it is (this is 
what I did n't foresee) that I actually don't feel privi- 
leged to refuse all this, considering that it is not offered 
to me as an individual, but as a representative. Oh, 
these next three days will be welcome! I leave to-night 
for a land of bogs, along the Pacific shore, near the 
mouth of the Columbia River. I shall be gone for 
four days — recuperative days, I believe! Ever since I 
came here I've had a headache, just from smiling so 
constantly — unless possibly the long train trip and the 
mountain altitude had something to do with causing it : 
but I don't think so. I think it was the smiling. And 



i8o LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

to-morrow, on the bogs, I can be ribald if I choose to 
be, and as rough and boorish as I Hke. 

The last two days of the train trip were marvellously 
fine — through the wild Rockies, across the desert, down 
the Spokane Valley, then into the Cascades, along deep 
gorges with towering pines and snowy mountains over- 
head, across bridges, coiling around cliff-sides, swinging 
out over wide valleys — then plunging into the forest 
again ! I had no idea the scenic aspect of the trip would 
be so impressive. I am anxious to go back by the same 
route so as to get by daylight what was lost in the dark 
on the outward trip. 

I have just decided not to attempt Alaska at all this 
time, partly because there is so much to undertake 
nearer at hand, but chiefly because the coastal regions, 
usually open at this season, are reported deep under 
snow, and I don't think the chance is good of finding 
moss so soon as next week. This may mean that I must 
come out again a couple of months later. So instead of 
that trip I am planning to cover a good section of the 
Oregon coast. And also I think I shall visit British Co- 
lumbia in the interests of the Canadian Red Cross. 

There is a surprising interest out here in sphagnum 
and the moss is very, very abundant. It is certain, I 
believe, that the bulk of the moss dressings will ulti- 
mately be produced in the Northwest Division. People 
glow here at the prospect of a special particular enter- 
prise. Local patriotism is almost a fever. All the moss so 
far has been gathered by volunteers, and the plan is to 
go ahead on this basis — at least as long as possible. 

Seattle is a splendid city, well built, with lovely va- 
ried water views and mountain panoramas. It has an 



TO THE SAME i8i 

energy and enthusiasm which are rather infectious. You 
feel it growing and aspiring. Its aspirations may be pre- 
dominantly material, but even so they are aspirations; 
and beside there is a big Red Cross activity here and 
much more war feeling than I expected. One thing that 
surprises me is the low price of food — as compared with 
ours in the East. Hotel fare here is fully one third 
cheaper, and awfully good. A wire from Edith yesterday 
told of her plan to join you. Mother, at the end of the 
week: so I hope this will fmd you together, and enjoy- 
ing life in the spring sunshine on porch or board walk. 1 
trust some real benefit is accruing from it, too. I enclose 
a check which I hope will help out for the additional 
week. I know you won't want to stay longer than that 
with the crush of visitors that always comes in late 
Lent. How I wish I could join you both for a couple of 
days! But it won't be very long now before I'm home 
again. 

Lovingly your son 

Harry 



To THE Same 



CLXIX 

Seattle, 14 March, 1918 
Mother dear: 

It was lovely to fmd a letter from you, and two 
from Edith, waiting for me here, yesterday, when I re- 
turned from my trip of discovery, and all the news, I 
thought, was good news, only that I would have liked 
to hear of your more substantial gain. Perhaps the stay 
in Brooklyn will help the good work forward. And if 
more still remains to be done, you'll have to run to Bos- 



i82 LETTERS OF HARRY JAMES SMITH 

ton and call on our doctor there. 1 'm sorry I have n*t 
been able to write a daily account of my late adven- 
tures; but the job on my hands has been so near the 
limit of what I could cope with that I 've just had to let 
other things slide. 

My exploring journey was really exhilarating, both 
by reason of the prodigious supplies of moss located and 
because of the beautiful good-will everybody showed 
toward the work; all wanting to help, anxious to be 
told what they could do, ready to organize and get 
at it immediately. Mayors and school principals and 
doctors and lumbermen and school-children and hotel- 
keepers and backwoodsmen: I never anywhere met 
with such a universal welcome. And these Washington 
bogs are so different from any I have seen in the East 
— yet strangely alike, too. The difference is in their 
wildness: such a jungle of bush and briar, of fallen 
timber, deep ditch, and thick, high forest. The woods 
here are dark and almost impenetrable, with lofty 
hemlock and long festoons of vine and moss. You can't 
get through them at all except by a trail, and that you 
often must blaze as you go. Some good bogs are much 
easier to get at than this description would suggest, 
and the most accessible are not far from highways. The 
others, many of them, are accessible to Boy Scouts and 
lumbermen; and where the moss is abundant enough 
to warrant it, a party can be organized to open up a 
road through the forest. This would be considered a 
day's pastime. That is why it seemed important to 
visit such places even though the only present way of 
finding them was to scramble and climb and creep and 
jump and shinny for some miles, in a downpour of rain. 



TO THE SAME 183 

In this country it rains one hundred inches a year, 
— almost every day for part of the day. I think Td 
come to Hke it. Certainly the air is very salubrious, and 
the blue, vaporous atmosphere, in sunshine, reminds 
me of Arichat — in fact, is exactly the same. 

It was rather a relief to get back to this city again 
and have a hot bath and a comfortable bed. I spent all 
yesterday in conferences at Headquarters; and attend- 
ing to correspondence; and to-day I shall be at the Uni- 
versity supervising the new pad-making. I am also to 
prepare a woman lecturer for sphagnum campaigning in 
Alaska. In a day or two I shall make a trip north to 
some reported good regions near the Canadian border, 
and then cross over to Vancouver and try to arrange 
for some collecting for the Canadian Red Cross. Before 
the end of next week I hope to be headed East. It seems 
as if I had been away for months. And how much we 
will have to talk about when we next meet!! 

So much love. 

Harry 

Mother, if you are still at Standish, will you find my 
binoculars, which are hanging on a hook in my closet, 
and forward them as per enclosed clipping, to the Navy? 



When such a life suddenly goes down on the sea of time, 
which just now is especially ravenous of our best, the shock 
of the news first stifles us. We think of the rare power 
stilled, and of all the laughter he would have found for the 
people which now they will never know, of those left so 
sorely stricken. But then the sun comes out. We think of 
the glorious company he is in. For he has gone on with the 
youth with whom in spirit he belonged. There can he no 
dimming of the freshness and ardor and achievement that 
were his. He abides in our memories fixed in the features 
of eternal youth, bright and glowing in the devotion of itself 
to the fulfilment of its own nature which, one way or an- 
other, is the saving of the world ! Mindful of this the eyes of 
those most loyal and dearest to him shine even through their 
tears, 

L B. G. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



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